Mosharraf Zaidi

http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=76155&Cat=9

Far too many have characterised the PTI rally at Minar-e-Pakistan as Imran Khan’s moment. But a more accurate description would be to classify the event in Lahore as PTI’s moment. Some of the most deserved criticism of his political efforts have been about the quality and depth of his team, and the actual layers of leadership and workers within the party.

The Lahore rally was a resounding response to this criticism. If it reflects any kind of a new standard for the PTI, then it is not Imran Khan that has come of age, it is the PTI. For electoral success, a party needs to know how to bring people out of their homes. In Lahore, the PTI showed that it can do this.

A new force in Pakistani politics has all kinds of implications for party politics in Pakistan. What is important is whether this new political force actually adds to the substantive policy depth being discussed and debated by electoral political groups. It is here that the PTI promises much more than any other political party in the country.

Since the first iteration of urban PPP voters in the early 70s, no party has excited educated, urban, middle and upper middle class voters the way PTI seems to be doing. A more sophisticated supporter, should in principle, be able to generate more sophisticated public policy. The extent to which the PTI’s agenda is based on a granular understanding of policy issues will determine how good or bad the PTI is for Pakistan.

It is too early to tell if the PTI is ready for a serious crack at the power game. If it does get a chance to govern, it will need to be able to have some idea of how to deliver against promises made, beyond the mere rhetoric and stagecraft of an election campaign.

Among the several really exciting policy pronouncements that Imran Khan made at the Lahore rally was the one about the police. Referring to the horrors that many ordinary Pakistanis must endure when they interface with the police, and the “thaana” or police station, Khan promised to clean it all up. This is a fantastic idea. It is one that ordinary Pakistanis have longed for, advocated, pleaded and begged for, for a long, long time.

Since police reform is such an important topic, it would be prudent for the PTI to have some kind of plan to tackle the issue. Right now, other than the fiery rhetoric it is not entirely clear that such a plan exists.

Other parties also spew the same rhetoric. And other parties also do not seem to have any plan. But the PTI supporters can’t just excuse their party with this kind of an explanation. They’ll have to do much, much better. Why? Because they claim to be much, much better.

So what would a plan for real police reform need to take into consideration? A whole lot.

For starters, police is a provincial subject. So a reformer is not just dealing with “the police” as a whole, but rather with four provincial police forces. No matter how good or sensible your idea is, you will have to convince each province of the merits of the idea.

Even in the most ideal scenario, can the PTI win a provincial government in each of the four provinces? It seems unlikely. This means that eventually, the PTI will have to sit across the table from the very political parties that it paints as rank evil, to negotiate police reform. It takes a lot of moxy to negotiate with people one doesn’t like.

Of course, thanks to repeated military governments, and the dictatorial appetites of even civilian governments – too lazy to engage in talking to the provinces – there is a massive edifice of police organisations that are “federal” in nature.

In total, there are at least 19 different organisations that have police-like or policing responsibilities. These include the two Frontier Corps, the two Rangers organisations, the Frontier Constabulary, the Coast Guards, the Islamabad Police, the Intelligence Bureau and perhaps most importantly the Federal Investigative Agency, or FIA.

Not all of these agencies are controlled by the Ministry of Interior, so even a powerful, barnstorming interior minister, like a young Aitzaz Ahsan, will not be able to beat the federal edifice of policing organisations into shape.

More importantly, not all of them represent the simple proliferation of organisations. Many have very genuine and legitimate reasons to exist and like the Anti Narcotics Force, have very specialised functions. Consider also the significant challenges that the civil military divide will pose to an organisational rehashing within the police.

The Intelligence Bureau will need to be strongly backed, to take back the space taken over by the military intelligence organisations like the ISI. The interior ministry will have to struggle to take total control over the FCs and the Rangers. The FIA and special branch relationships will need strengthening so that they may be able to stand up to the intimidating power of the military’s investigative bodies.

Without getting too bogged down with the important specifics of how common it is for police investigations to be interrupted and ruined by interventions made in the name of national security, it will also be important for any serious folks interested in reforming the police and the police stations to have some idea of the numerical scale of the issue.

Punjab police alone has 170,000 employees. Sindh has more than 80,000. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has over 50,000 and Balochistan has more than 32,000 policemen. The roughly 330,000 provincial policemen are augmented by the civil armed forces (FC, Rangers, Scouts, Coast Guard etc.) with a strength of more than 170,000.

And what about the thaana itself? There are almost 1,400 police stations in the country. Concurrently, there are only about 650 officers in the Police Service of Pakistan. Any reformer interested in putting each thaana in the guardianship of a BPS-17 officer with an education and high career stakes, like the officers of the police service of Pakistan (PSP), would need to produce over a thousand such officers rather quickly.

The scope and scale of the challenge of fixing the police is one thing. Entirely another is the fiscal space needed to execute a comprehensive plan. Pakistan is desperately short of investigative and forensic facilities and the independent prosecution services needed to put bad guys away, and protect the good folks is sorely underfunded and incapacitated.

The PTI is right to want to transform Pakistani policing. In the coming years, the PTI may actually have a chance to do the things it says it wants to do. As it grows into the arms of a nation aching for change, the PTI better have a plan for when it gets there. Developing such plans is a lot harder than making a fiery speech. Is the PTI up to the task?