It is almost an unequivocal assessment by veteran observers of politics and politicians that since the inception of Pakistan, the best functional government that ever existed is that of Moeen Qureshi. Things are happening; right things. What is making them tick? No minister has yet asked for a million to dish out contracts. Surprise? Clearly because they are not permanent. They do not have to dish out favours; they do not have to receive any thing in return, votes included. This brings an interesting inquiry: Why haven't the elected governments worked out? It is because of a basic flaw in human concept. Humans forget how transient their existence is. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, is an old dictum but it deserves repeating as oft as possible. Humans have short memories; they easily forget the temporariness of their existence once they come to realize that they can, in their own meager way, change destinies. Unfortnately, the strongest of the strong, the bravest of the brave, the mightiest of the mighty, all meet the same end. Bernard Shaw wrote eloquently: "What he saw was that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human geniuses, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system." Such is the irony of human life and such is the dilemma of man's survival attitude.

The point is that the only thing that is permanent in this Universe is our non-permanence. Nothing will last forever; not even the matter created at the Big Bang. It shall all return to its Creator.

Whether governments last for 3 months or 3 years or even 12 years (as the longest government in Pakistan lasted), they are always temporary. Given the magnitude of time itself, these periods are humbly minuscle. Those who have read philosophy, those who believe in religion, those who are aware of the medical realities, those who have seen passing of souls, those who think, they must all agree with this argument it: we shall all perish.

The sense of temporariness should make us humble; we should make our best efforts to make this a better place to live for others, a fact that we should appreciate if we are to survive as a race or even as a species. It is a pity that after a few weeks we will again experience facing a government who might soon begin believing that they are here to stay till doomesday; they will then be hell bent on destroying us all because it is through this indiscriminate destruction that they will find a solace in their insatiable desire for permanence.

How do we break this cycle? There is a simple solution but not very palatable to many. By constitution, prohibit re-election to prime ministership or reappointment to ministerial posts (regardless of how short the tenure) for at least one term of the government. This will have two benefits. First, it will force political parties to develop more leaders instead of dynasties and secondly it will make them realize that there is life without being in the driving seat. That's what the US constitution did when it restricted that the president can not be elected for more than two terms; this was aimed at preventing seeding of dynasties. Every two years, half the congress gets reelected; senators every four years, though with no limit on the number of terms. We are not even ready for that yet. We should also disqualify for elections those who own or have ever owned any piece of agriculture land for the next 20 years. Time to think and reflect quickly because we only got so little of it left. We should also make it mandatory for all aspirants of government to memorize our national anthem and Nazir Akbarabadi's Banjara in toto.

[27 August 1993 The Daily Dawn]