Nisar Memon urges going back to basics

By Abdul Qadir Qureshi
(Pakistan News & Features Services)

“When a person, nation or humanity is beset with problem; the commonly tried and tested approach is to go to the root cause of the problem to understand, analyze and find solution to fix it. This is what is done in knowledge based organized societies with strong but firm, selfless but truthful, visionary but practical leadership,” Senator Nisar Memon, a former federal minister, remarked in his latest newspaper article.

“We have all witnessed the handling of coronavirus (COVID-19) by Islamabad leadership. The pandemic in Pakistan is rooted through the import of it by our own nationals coming from USA and Iran initially. If Islamabad had analyzed it in time, we would have saved many a lives lost already and saved thousands from its painful contact and millions from the short term and long term mental agony, physical inconvenience and economic hardship,” he opined. 

“The capability and capacity in Islamabad for cool rational thinking without bias is now an open secret. It has been recorded by media, including all pervasive social media, that the leadership viewed COVID-19only with one lens and that of politics,” he added. 

“The rest followed and explains the lack of Islamabad cooperation with provinces sans Punjab province which appears to have direct rule of Islamabad, not through the Governor Rule as provided in Article 232/234 of the constitution of Pakistan but by informal arrangement. The results are very visible,” the former Minister pointed out.

“A closer look at our history indicates, if we had paid attention to identifying the root cause of issues as they came along we would not have questions like: why our public health and education not responsive to need of the hour, why our economy is based on alms, why our governance is weak, why despite strong bureaucracy we are unable to provide services to common man from Karakoram to Keti Bander, why we have conflicts between institutions and subsequent interference, why we have indigenously developed strategic weapons but yet for research on water, food and energy we are dependent on outside the country, why we hire consultants for even telling us what our vision should be, why we are producing leaders which sooner or later we renounce and show them the door. The list of why, why goes on,” he continued. 

“This is because: our value system has and is eroding; our education system is not based on science and technology; institutions have and are decaying; our parliament is not what was envisaged; we have laws but enforcement is nonexistent, compromised or selective; our judiciary is unable to provide speedy justice to common man; perpetually there is a ruling class and a ruled one; our society has visible conflict of interest at the highest offices and people violating constitution are not taken to task,” Senator Nisar Memon explained. 

“We all know, the value system starts from home and built up by schooling therefore the fundamental right to education must be enforced and the education system aligned with our value systems and science to meet the needs of the time. We need well placed government priorities replacing old colonial systems. The political reforms should begin with political parties followed by electoral reforms to get high quality competent representative elected to assemblies,” he suggested.