What happens when defenders and custodians of law themselves trample all over the law? The lawyers’ chambers around the District Courts in Islamabad are illegal. But to compound the illegality, prominent lawyers are raising a new structure upon the single-storey chambers. What would you call this travesty of law? Double whammy or compound illegality? In the eyes of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) these chambers on public space are totally illegal. When his attention was drawn to this brazen encroachment by the black coats, a top CDA official said, “We cannot touch lawyers and clerics.” Who will stop them from such blatant violations if not a state institution? The same lawyers also want the government land for their housing society. Isn’t it blackmailing by those who are supposed to prevent and thwart blackmailing? The Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), the embodiment of best practitioners of law, for instance, is pressurising the CDA to acquire land for them under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894. And to justify what is an extremely bloated sense of entitlement, the SCBA recently responded to a news story in a national daily by saying: “It is not the first case regarding the city of Islamabad. More than 20 to 30 housing societies were established and lands were acquired for them through the Land Acquisition Act, 1894.” Several senior judges, the report said, are also members of the SCBA housing society and their names are being used to force the local administration to acquire land for them. The issue at hand is; why should the state lands be doled out on concessional rates to extremely high-income group professionals like lawyers, top bureaucrats, military officers and their cronies? All professionals, including lawyers, are making hefty living for themselves and are not into any public service. Why should they expect the state to provide them a place for their chambers, or in this case, occupy public property? Why are lead lawyers silent over the abuse...

The Sharifs and Zardari knowingly distort and misstate facts and then play the victim card because they consider abusing the national kitty and power as their prerogative. Tom Price, the US health and human services secretary, resigned (September 2017) under pressure after racking up at least $400,000 in travel bills for chartered flights, something that flew in the face of President Trump’s promise to ‘drain the swamp of a corrupt and entitled capital.’ Mr Price neither offered any regrets nor even a partial reimbursement. He quietly opted out of the office. No regret. No remorse. No payment back to the national kitty. Does this offer an analogy to the Pakistani ruling royals? The Sharifs and Zardaris — both friends with the only known property tycoon of this country — keep calling each other corrupt but take offense when reminded of these acts. Pretense of innocence is writ large on their faces. But this masks considerable arrogance and indifference to the plight of common citizens. Knowingly they distort and misstate facts and play the victim card because they consider abusing the national kitty and power as their prerogative. Tom Price’s departure also reminds of the princely way our ruling elites live off the poor public’s expense. They treat the office and the attendant privileges as preordained for them as the chosen ones. Let us recall a few instances to underscore how much these elites care for the public money. Former president (late) Farooq Leghari once (in mid 1990s) landed at Devos for the World Economic Forum (WEF) — a congregation that discusses global best practices of governance, equitable, inclusive and transparent development. It was Ramzan and the presidential entourage needed the kitchen of the hotel they were staying in for the pre-dawn food (sehri) to prepare for the day, recalls a diplomat who was part of the party then. Pakistani officials were told that the kitchen opens only at 6. No, we will need fresh food for the president, officials...

Instead of sparring in the media, the civilians and military should reconsider their positions. The right to speak for individuals or on behalf of institutions comes either from a sense of entitlement or ownership. In Pakistan, as far as one can discern, the civilians speak with a sense of entitlement (however bloated). And General Headquarters (GHQ) speaks from a strong sense of ownership that it projects through its influence, direct or otherwise, on governance and foreign policy. The latest public spat between the civil and military arms of the state addressing one another via the media is the best manifestation of these, one could argue, bloated senses of entitlement and ownership. The entitlement is rooted in the “voter power.” It is the voter who decides and empowers leaders to speak on their behalf and determine their fate. The sense of ownership of “the territory called Pakistan” within GHQ, and accompanied by strong concerns on the civilians steering this ship, is rooted in four military dictatorships under Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Ziaul Haq and Pervez Musharraf. Unfortunately, this sense of ownership is coloured with a superiority complex, which is institutionally instilled in the cadets who carry it with them throughout their career. This explains the propensity among most armed forces personnel to justify military take-overs, most of which were in turn justified by arguments of civilian corruption and inefficiency. The Musharraf coup, for instance, deployed corruption arguments. But the trigger for it was the denial to land his aircraft with 198 other passengers on it on October 12, 1999. A detailed account of this by Captain Tariq Baloch circulated in recent days is hair-raising. That incident aside, the decay in the political economy today is attributable to four military rules, which distorted segments of governance, leading to the deployment of scores of civilian military officers. This has, over time, stunted the growth of the civilian bureaucracy,...

The hearts and minds of many among the mighty rulers actually reside outside Pakistan, which is why they are indifferent to the plight of Pakistanis. We hear Nawaz Sharif, Asif Zardari, Shahbaz Sharif, Yousaf Raza Gillani, a number of retired generals, bureaucrats and businessmen relentlessly speak — with an ostensible passion and conviction — of the pain they feel for the teeming hapless millions of Pakistan. Of late, Zardari, who had meekly left the country in a huff in 2016 after hurling threats at the mighty military establishment, is roaring again. During his Peshawar visit, he made all sorts of oblique remarks about Sharif and Imran Khan in particular. He said that every sort of fraud had been carried out in KP, and the state of affairs at Manki Sharif said a lot about the performance of the PTI in the KP province. This was one of the disparaging comments the former president made to the audience. I am sure his party has turned most of interior Sindh into ‘modern, smart cities’ with the 1.1 trillion rupees that the province has received since 2013 under the National Finance Commission (NFC) award and are now craving to replicate the Sindh model elsewhere. It is quite ironic that these allegations come from a person who is an essential element of almost every conversation on contracts, corruption within governance structures. If political expedience of the civilian and military ruling elites were not an obstruction, one big water filtration plants’ scheme in Sindh was enough to know the extent and nature of fraud and as to who was behind it. Nawaz Sharif and his hyper younger brother, too, often forget what plays out in the schools and hospitals of Punjab — even in Lahore itself — when they target their opposition — always accompanied by pliant politicians and bureaucrats. Little wonder much of Pakistan has only deteriorated under these shining stars of the country’s political landscape. National kitty continues to leak under the burden of privileges that the...