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[B]Why the best are being lost?[/B] By Tasneem Noorani

AN outstanding functionary of the state was killed with a shot to the head in his bedroom in front of his wife during the wee hours of the morning some time ago in Pakistan’s so-called safest city — Islamabad. The immediate reaction of the police was that it was a robbery.

This instinctive reaction to point out a “safe” direction for the deed defies logic. Why should four men waste their time in trying to rob an officer with an honest reputation and living in spartan conditions when they have far more lucrative alternatives?

Investigations being supervised by the apex court of the country — the deceased being an officer of the Supreme Court at the time of his demise — will hopefully reveal the culprits soon. Any conclusion other than the one that the police have come to is too horrendous to visualise, and one hopes that the allegations of his widow are not correct. Any other conclusion would destabilise one’s faith in the state.

Hammad Raza was an officer of the District Management Group, and who, even though domiciled in Punjab, was content to serve in the tough environs of Balochistan for 13 long years without cribbing like some others, because he had a youthfully exuberant sense of duty towards the state. He reportedly never asked for a posting to more comfortable locations until his requisitioning by the Supreme Court a few months back. The exacting standards that he had set for himself are vividly portrayed in his last e-mail written three days before his death.

Talking about corruption to a friend he wrote “Before putting someone else to the test, I tried it on myself with horrifying results. May I then submit my own case:

“1.Not every minute of my time spent in the office has been in discharging official duties.

“2. Not every call from the official telephones provided for use has been official.

“3. Not every litre of fuel provided to me officially has been used for strictly official purposes.

“4. There have been certain occasions during field postings when I have not paid my utility bills. These are some of the charges that came up against me during the investigation of “introspection”. And I plead guilty on each count and await your verdict as to where I stand.”

Such a high standard of self-rectitude should be a beacon for the rest of the state functionaries. Why is it that the best are being lost?

Some months ago, there was the case of another outstanding and brave man, a police officer by the name of Malik Saad, dying in a suicide attack in Peshawar.

Are we trying to stamp out the little good that exists in our midst by making a horrible example of the upright ones? On the contrary, we should be making heroes of such individuals, if not in life then at least in death, so that our youngsters are inspired to emulate them, specially their values.

The state has a responsibility towards rewarding and recognising state functionaries with such high moral values and a record of selfless service so that the good in the system has an outside chance of not being stamped out completely.

The pain of the brutal death of a young idealistic judicial officer has even pushed the horror of the macabre blood-letting in Karachi to secondary position. All in all it has been a depressing time.

The happenings of May 12 in Karachi were both a failure of political as well as administrative planning. On the political plane, anyone associated with this game, could have told the government that dead bodies are something that the opposition always wants in such a situation.

That is just the kind of thing which fuels the public’s passion against the incumbent government, and in this case, the government walked into the trap and readily obliged the opposition.

The restraint shown in the march between Islamabad and Lahore had by all accounts won kudos for the government. Public memory is short for peaceful events which do not leave a scar on the heart.

Planners for the government should realise that the government’s position currently is like that of a boxer pushed against the ropes and bearing the onslaught of the opponent. This is the time for the government to defend with its guards up rather than to attack if it wants to survive the current situation to fight another day.

Administratively, it was obvious to all who watched the punch by punch fight on television that the government had decided to hand over the city to its MQM component to sort out the Chief Justice and his supporters who wanted to show their strength.

The argument given must have been that if the government machinery itself tries to block the Chief Justice’s procession; it will be blamed for any violence that may ensue. Such tactics usually backfire as they did in this case.

In the good old days, when administrations were strong, they would not have taken any nonsense from anyone, even the sitting government, when it came to preventing a riot or potential blood-letting. The district government would have negotiated with one of the two parties to postpone their rally.

If the Chief Justice’s group had not agreed they would have certainly convinced the ruling party to desist in the interest of peace. Then they would have made arrangements to prevent processions from getting together, under the legal cover of Section 144, and perhaps used containers (what a wonderful gadget of the modern world; you can now block processions, build stages for rallies within hours and in the future perhaps cart protestors away by the hundreds from the scene of demonstrations) to prevent the Chief Justice’s procession.

A few torn shirts and a few broken bones would not have had the electrifying impact that the opposition has been able to get out of the event. But unfortunately, the status of professional administrations has been hammered into the ground, without yielding any apparent benefit to either the public or the rulers.

What is unfolding in our living rooms, thanks to the advent of numerous TV channels, is a match between the rulers and the public that we in Pakistan get to see regularly at the end of seven to 10 years of military rule.

This time, however, the coverage is more vivid and blow by blow, because of the wonders of the newly developed electronic media, credit for which has to be given to Gen Musharraf.

One only hopes that both sides play by the rules in the current contest between the government and the opposition, both for the sake of the Pakistani public and our already tarnished international image.

The writer is a former interior secretary.
[email]tasneem.noorani@tnassociates.net[/email]