Editorial: Joining the Establishment

Chief Minister Raisani has recommended the Baloch youth to give up support to the nationalist movement and become a part of the establishment to live a better life. He insisted that the Baloch youths were wasting their time and energy by becoming a part of a movement which was allegedly backed by some international powers. To find a better living, the Baloch chief minister added, the youth should concentrate on education and become a part of key institutions like the Pakistan Army and other state corporations.

Nawab Raisani is not the first top officer among the rulers to urge the Baloch youth to become a part of the national mainstream. Similar unsolicited advice had been offered in the past by President Pervez Musharraf and his cronies too. However, Raisani is the first Baloch leader who has suddenly emerged as a passionate champion of Baloch participation in the key state institutions. One wonders since when Raisani has become the spokesman for the Establishment and what the actual nature of his contacts with the Establishment is.

What actually is the Establishment? Leading defense analyst Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa provided an insightful definition for the invisible entity in an article published in Dawn.

“The establishment is not a static entity. It has evolved over the years with newer members joining in and becoming more significant than others. However, a distinction must be made between the core, peripheral and associate members. It is the core members that moderate and control the dynamics of the establishment while the peripheral ones provide support to the system without determining the direction of the working of the establishment. The associate members are taken on board when the need arises.

“The core members include senior members of the military and civil bureaucracies, select politicians, media houses and some key economic players. While the military and civil bureaucracies are easier to identify because they have a formal organisational shape and well-defined institutional interests, other actors such as politicians and the media are not so easily captured.”

It needs to be seen how the Baloch political parties and the youth would respond to the call made by Raisani, who has increasingly become unpopular in Balochistan due to his failure to resurface the Baloch missing persons and check widespread corruption in his government. Before making any projections, one needs to keep in mind a few ground realities of Balochistan.

Firstly, the Establishment, which is often referred to the civil and military bureaucracy that holds the real power and makes all key decisions in Pakistan, is considered a very rogue entity. An ideologically committed political activist would always get offended if he is offered to join the establishment. No body would like to be associated with the Establishment in a politically conscious society like Balochistan for obvious reasons.

Secondly, the mainstream nationalist political parties in Balochistan have distanced themselves from parliamentary politics. They boycotted the last general elections. While many Balochs admire these parties for staying away from the parliament, their absence confirms the lack of representation of Baloch in the federal legislative body. Until the Baloch nationalist parties openly contest elections and become a part of the parliament, Raisani’s wish of seeing all Balochs become a part of the Establishment will remain unfulfilled.

Thirdly, people in Balochistan have started to believe that even those Balochs, such as Chief Minister Raisani, who have joined the Establishment have not been able to make a significant collective change in the society of Balochistan. They wonder if a cabinet of almost sixty ministers, after becoming a declared part of the Establishment, utterly failed to get Balochistan its due rights, how then is the participation of the Baloch youth going to make a big difference.

Fourthly, an initiative that intends to make the Baloch a part of the Establishment has to be started from the government side. The Aghaz-e-Haqooq-e-Balochistan was indeed one similar effort. There was nothing wrong with bribing the Balochs to make them a part of the Establishment. After all every government adopts such strategies to push its agenda.

A promise of providing four thousand jobs to the unemployed youth of Balochistan under the Balochistan Package did not yield results because those employment opportunities were distributed on the political basis among the members of the government. The Balochistan Package was a major effort to buy the Baloch loyalties but it only helped to consolidate the already loyal members of the assembly. They made sure that they tactfully sold these jobs to their voters to ensure a smooth victory in the upcoming general elections.

Lastly, Raisani should acknowledge that his government has not done sufficiently to win the hearts of the local people. He will only be undermining his credibility by becoming a mouthpiece of the establishment at a time when Balochs feel being treated unfairly.


http://thebalochhal.com/2010/09/editorial-joining-the-establishment/