Pak Tea House » Opinion » System vs individuals
System vs individuals
By Engr. Syed Ghulam Mustafa
The nation I am talking about has sixty four years experience in different forms of government, from civil to military, parliamentary to presidential, Union council to municipal, but is still in search of a system that could satisfy their need of progress, prosperity and peace. Yes, I am definitely talking about my own nation, Pakistan. The only missing point in our whole struggle and analysis of searching a flawless political system is that, there are no man made systems which could provide us a comprehensive solution for blood sucking problems unless we have the honest, loyal and will to resolve our issues, power and its attainment by the individuals who run them.
However, since there is no tool available to measure the internal traits of the persons who exercise powers, we cannot ensure the presence of good persons/leaders on the power center. It means that we have to bring a form of government in which power concentrate in institutions rather than individuals. Nowadays democracy in which all the institutions serving the country within their specified boundaries ,is considered the most practical and functional system.
Unfortunately, every system we experienced, it worked for few weeks or at most for few months and after that nation suffered the horrible side effects of the underlying system. Neither it was surprising nor was it our bad lack, but only the contradiction of our national thoughts. Many of us praise the Marshal Law of Gen. Ayub Khan but dislike the continuation of Gen. Yahya Khan, a huge number people love the democracy under the ruling of Mr. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, but rejects it when it brings Mr. Nawaz Sharif and Muhtarma Benazir Bhutto in power. if the dictatorship of Gen. Ayub was acceptable, what went wrong with Gen. Yahya , if the democracy was lovable with ZA Bhutto, why it become unacceptable with Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto,? In my opinion, in all form of government we focused people instead of systems, and when the power exercisers made the abusive use of their, for-granted powers, nation start hating the system, considering it incapable of solving their problems. What happened in times of Gen. Ayub, we didn’t bother to think even for a single minute about the consequences of having some corrupt General, while Gen. Ayub was blindly concentrating all the powers. Same happened in the tenure of Mr. ZA Bhutto, who honored the prime minister with all the available strength, and we gladly accepted his constitution without realizing the consequences of having some incompetent person in power. The similar pattern followed from Gen. Musharraf emergency to Mr. Asif Ali Zardari’s presidency. As the result we are still thinking, which is best form of government, democracy or dictatorship. History should not only be used to give the references in books and article, but we must extract its precious lesson. How rubbish is is that we are not ready to learn anything from our “precious history”. Yes, it is precious because we incurred heavy damages and incurable losses in making it. This nation ran through appreciable moments to restore judiciary and protect its freedom, but how unfortunate is that we are ready to put all the powers in basket of supreme court without realizing that what would be our way out if supreme court start exercising its power in a way it used in ZA Bhutto case. The meaning is simple and straight forward, do not trust the abilities of the system just because of the person running, but we must have complete insight of all the bad and good we come across in future. No matter who is the president, who is prime minister, whoever is Chief Justice and whoever is army chief, neither we should support nor we should ask any of them to exercise their unconstitutional powers. On the other hand if any of them try to concentrate the powers within his or her personality; we must immediately oppose this act of damaging system. In the end I just want to say that, we should struggle to protect system rather than Individuals.
Filed under: Opinion · Tags: democracy vs dictatorship, individuals, political system, who was correct
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A very old issue raised in a new way. I hope this drop, also would help to nation distinguish between good-bad, false-true,and fragile-durable systems.
Islam really does not beleive in Democracy. Democracy has brought up due to lackness of those Muslims emperrors/rulers who strengthend Malookiyet (Kingdoms/dictatorship).
So, it is easy to understand that: Distatorship/Kingdom/Malookiyet is worst; Democracy is bad and obedience to Quran/Sunnah (the Prophecy) is the best…… I’m saying so, because history tells the same story.
good try!
Nice thinking
Fantastic Mustafa … thumbs up!!
rightly said “we should protect system instead of individuals”
most of us choose language instead of ideology, to elect;
about 1400 years back in muslims’s civilization, caliphs were elected by the people and decisions were taken on the basis of democracy. A group of ulema was also present, who use to contineously moniter those democratic decision that whether they are in accordance with sharia or not; they had full authority to hurld those decisions, which were not accordance with sharia. This can be implemented as a solution for governing right laws and taking flawless decisions in muslim society.
This is great article. I believe that this article has raised the issue of concentrating upon the system rather than the leader at that time. A nation can and will have bad leaders and those leaders should be removed by constitutional means. Democracy with all it’s faults seems to be the best form of government. All those legislatures and the leaders who do not perform should be voted out. maturity of the voters is needed. this article points to the voters that the attention should be paid to the system and not to the present day personalities.
This is so true and well written. If we really have a good system then people really do not matter. It was so funny to hear in an interview of a guy who was living in Canada. When asked who is the prime-minister of Canada. He said I don’t know. In a good system people really do not have to worry about who is the ruling party but they know system is in place. Current government is eating all the money from departments. Funny thing NICL corruption behind which gilani’s son found to be the person. Though who is arrested ? those who refused to take bribe. Now these innocent people don’t even have money to pay in bribe and are in prison so Geo can say we have some poor employees arrested who could not pay bribes. Even chairman of that is house arrested but 2 poor employees are in. Pakistan’s system is made in a way so corrupt can eat all institutions. Better system would be to privatize all departments. Any department in the hands of government is creating a system for corruption. Seems our current system is designed for corrupted governments. It is so obvious no one like to fix it.
Marvelous Job Sir!!!
Good article
Though we would accept that system emerges from individuals but yet we tend to deny a system. Individuals then choose to accept or discard that system, forgetting that it emerged from within themselves. System is outcome of many individuals thus shall be protected and accepted.
splendid effort by the author, he raised much need point. it is observed that most of us still following individuals instead of putting over efforts to strengthen system..!
Good try and a motivation for the youth..
Great Man, nice thought rejecting or accepting of system on basis of individuals, we must protect the system rather than peoples.
keep it up.
Good article. But i respectfully disagree with your conclusion. Systems could not be saved just as individuals unless you consider its ideology worth dying for. Writer assumed that system (nowadays democracy) should be saved. Democracy is just a product of secular world. Secularists are always roaming between different kinds of systems like nazism, fascism, recently communism & now democracy. Islam just don’t accept the whole idea of democracy. For example Islam doesn’t just count votes, it also measures the weight of that opinion. Islam makes a clear distinction between the opinion of an expert and illiterate person.
Pakistan is currently ruled by a system imported from secular world controlled by some elite politicians and army generals. And this system along with its individuals is our main problem. So before saving our system we first of all need to decide and choose our system.
Every system requires people to run them. Not all countries have a uniform system of government but they perform well, because no matter what is the designation of head of the state is, he performs well and in his boundary. In my view we need a system which is composed of strong, well-integrated sub-systems which all work towards the betterment of society.
As far as Pakistan is concerned, we have tried many systems but each of them had disadvantages and advantages of it’s own, because they principals did not act in accordance to the terms of their oath.
I appreciate the well written and well structured effort of Mr. Mustafa, my views may differ but my desire is the same as you. The development of Pakistan
Hmm… Pretty impressive.
Though, It shouldn’t be just about the Government. Sure, a leader is required to run an organization smoothly but it is certainly not possible to make a nation top-notch without the support of its people. The way our nation has been acting lately is preposterous.
Unless our people decide to drop the big talks and actually intend to do some damage control, we will still be suffering just like we have been, since 1947.
[...] System vs individuals [...]
“A letter from the Pakistani Defense Ministry today to the Supreme Court admits that the government has lost all control over the operations of both the Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.
“In a late night development on Wednesday which added yet another twist to the memo scandal, the federal government, through the Ministry of Defence, conceded before the Supreme Court that it had no operational control over the armed forces as well as the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).”
http://www.dawn.com/2011/12/22/no-control-over-operations-of-army-isi-govt.html
What you in Pakistan have is more KLEPTOCRACY than DEMOCRACY……..
Well written article, and nice selection of topic considering your first!, I think its high time that we establish a framework/roadmap such that corruption can be mitigated or reduced to the minimum, and will eventually lead to a corruption free and just Pakistan.