Never, never should we think that angels will descend from heaven and change the hearts and minds of elected representatives; or of the armed forces, to correct their paths. Only good accountability laws, an impartial judiciary, free media and activist civil society can force elected representatives to remain within the limits of law, writes Rasul Baksh in his article for daily times news paper. He is an analyst and professor of political science at LUMS in Pakistan.

The question arises do we have good accountability laws? If we have a glance on our current system of government we can find thousands of flaws in it. Recently NAB revealed that they had pressure by the government in the matter of NRO cases though the request to the Swiss government for reopening the corruption cases against Asif Ali Zardari was sent later following the resignation of attorney general. But the article 248 of our constitution give immunity to the president therefore no case can be filed against him in the Swiss court as Daniel Zappeli has already stated. This show that how weak is our democratic government that its president’s transparency is in question.

The existing government claims to be the heroes of the war against terrorism but actually failed to cope with the affects of the war. Millions of internally displaced persons (IDPs) are still living in miserable condition in the camps. Although the government has bestowed us with the never ending load shedding, value added tax, inflation, cruel police and much more. However, the government stumbles on other ways to finish the problems like by making announcements to shut down markets at 8pm in order to save power instead of producing projects for utilizing the resources to generate energy.

The legitimacy of our government is always in jeopardy. The entire system is still covered by the shadows of dictatorship. Take the example of strategic talks with the U.S.A. Our chief of army staff Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani was given the privilege to attend those discussions and was declared the most powerful man in Pakistan by the U.S. The question arises why was his presence necessary when we have a President and a Prime Minister?  It seems as if our president doesn’t have that potential to cope with the matters like US strategic talks. There may be one reason for US diversion towards military of Pakistan that they have always been successful in maintaining good and fruitful relations with the Pakistan military. How can we forget the cold war and most recently the successful operations in Khyber pukhtunkhwa (NWFP) for the so called war against terrorism?

To make Pakistan a flourishing country we need to strengthen our democratic system of government. To achieve this goal the existing government must face the corruption cases against them to set an example of good accountability in Pakistan. The people of Pakistan must be provided with the basic provisions of life, development projects for a good infrastructure and hydroelectric projects to meet the shortage of electricity in Pakistan must be started.

According to international monetary fund (IMF) Pakistan’s inflation rate would be increased from 9% to 11% for current fiscal year keeping in view increase in crude oil prices and rise in power tariff. The economic growth rate will be 3% whereas threats to economic will also remain same. Recently the POL prices increased by 4% and HOBC by 2% but we see the present government apathetic of whatever happens to the economy of Pakistan. After enforcing value added tax on the people of Pakistan on the aspiration of IMF the foreign minister stated that they had made it clear to the IMF that they won’t impose any further taxes on the people of Pakistan. But every foreign minister says it after these taxes are imposed. It seems as if they can’t say no to the IMF. To cope with the problems of returning loans government should made the elite class to pay taxes.

This system must be changed and a healthy democratic government must be there for us and our future generations.