Pakistan is heading dangerously close to economic default. This country is so rich that it forgets how much recoverable money is pending, so as to receive it from those to whom it sold its assets decades ago.
In classical mythology, hubris was considered a very dangerous shortcoming; it was an act of arrogance, usually where the hero attempted to assume godlike status. The gods of Greek mythology did not look favourably on mortals who overstepped or bragged a bit too much! The ancient Greeks considered hubris a fatal flaw that brought tragedy upon heroes… and commonly led to their death
Recently, a press report claimed that audited documents prepared by the Privatisation Commission (PC) of Pakistan showed that receivables from privatization stand at Rs 5.2 billion. However, the document did not mention the Rs 163 billion in receivables from a UAE-based company.
The privatization programme started in 1991 and 142 entities have either been sold or had their shares divested in return for Rs 649 billion. About 25 percent of the proceeds, however, remain outstanding.
According to the report around Rs 5.2 billion were outstanding from 13 parties as on 30 June 2022. Of the Rs 5.2 billion, the maximum amount of Rs 4 billion was outstanding against one Group.
The newspaper claimed that the document does not mention the outstanding dues of $799.3 million against a Dubai-based company while this amount was mentioned in a previous receivable report, prepared during the tenure of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI).
During Gen Musharraf’s era, Pakistan privatized assets even without receiving 50 percent of the total bid amount, and assets were handed over to companies. This was a Pakistan-on-sale kind of attitude; however those assets that are great liabilities like Pakistan Steel Mills, Pakistan International Airlines, etc were not sold and only those were sold which were earning sons of the motherland.
In December 2018, the National Assembly Standing Committee on Privatisation directed the Privatization Ministry to send 14 cases to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for recovery of Rs 82.3 billion worth of outstanding dues from various parties including the Dubai-based Etisalat group. The Standing Committee on Privatisation was informed that Rs 82.32 billion remained outstanding, some of the amount for more than 25 years.
However, nothing was done for recovery and because the majority of sales were done during the era of Musharraf, who was in uniform and how could anybody ask any question to him or do anything about a person who is (or was) in uniform?
We understand there is an unwritten code in Pakistan that no action whatsoever for anything would be taken against anybody who wears or worn the uniform in Pakistan because the fatal pride of the uniform will fall into danger.
This is one of the reasons that no action has ever been taken against men in uniform who meddled with the future of the country by manipulating the political process. Meanwhile, slowly but surely, state-sponsored intellectuals and writers managed to blur several universal ideas to justify what men in uniform did with Pakistan.
I teach at a university and I have checked that almost 100 percent of my students think that the Army is one of the state pillars. Slowly but surely and less than 10 percent of our youth today know that the three pillars of the State are the Executive, the Legislature, and the Judiciary.
I know there is only one pillar of the State which is the Army practically and the Judiciary like Justice Munir to Justice Maulvi Mushtaq followed whatever instruction came from the GHQ and the Legislature always played their role whenever they were needed, like the last extension of the Army chief and Executive, of course, could not dare to say No to the instruction.
Therefore, practically Pakistan is a One-Pillar State and that pillar is the Army. n firmly believe that the 1973 Constitution needs holistic changes and the European-borrowed concept of a Three-Pillar State must be changed to One-Pillar State because this change would rectify anomalies of all three so-called State Pillars to fix the questions students of Political Sciences, History and Journalism usually ask me.
This change is also essential for the security of the country because we know no nation can maintain its sovereignty without having a strong Army. We have seen what happened in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan in the recent past where their armies were dismantled and then their sovereignties were stripped from them.
Since “Hubris”, or fatal pride, of our Army is an important and sensitive matter for the country, so there is no harm to satisfy hubris by granting whatever role it wishes and whatever changes the men in uniform deem fit. There is nothing more important than the sovereignty of the country and words like Parliament, Constitution and Democracy are useless if the sovereignty of the country is in danger.
One can argue that the Army’s pride is not “Hubris” but the usual pride every Army on earth enjoys. I could accept this point if I could have seen that the institution of the Army ever stayed away from individuals who played havoc with Pakistan like Gen Ziaul Haq and Gen Musharraf and some instances in the recent past where individuals manipulated the political process of the country overtly because they knew nobody could question them as their institution was behind their back.
Federal Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah recently named four characters, blaming them for hatching conspiracy against the PML(N) government since 2013. Two of them had been in uniform. The same two names were raised by former Prime Minister Nawaz Nawaz Sharif when he was disqualified by the courts. However, his party was proactive in providing an extension to one of them when a law was moved in Parliament, reemphasizing that all other pillars of the State stand with whatever the one real pillar of the state decides. Therefore, enjoying and feeling extraordinary pride is justified by this one pillar. Conversely, sometimes this pride surpasses itself and enters into the category of “fatal pride: hubris”.
In classical mythology, hubris was considered a very dangerous shortcoming; it was an act of arrogance, usually where the hero attempted to assume godlike status. The gods of Greek mythology did not look favourably on mortals who overstepped or bragged a bit too much! The ancient Greeks considered hubris a fatal flaw that brought tragedy upon heroes… and commonly led to their death.
The punishment for hubris was often a shocking reminder of human limitations and mortality. As such, hubris was a prime topic of Greek tragedy. The story of the most legendary Greek hero, Bellerophon, is popular to remind us that pride lies only with omnipotent divine power.
Bellerophon was proud of himself for taming the winged horse named Pegasus who could take him to places that others only dreamed of. His command of flying wherever he wished instigated him to see Olympus, the home of the Greek gods, and so he urged Pegasus to fly higher and higher and higher….
The gods didn’t like that. To them, Bellerophon was clearly overstepping his place as one of the mortal Greek heroes. They sent a fly to sting Pegasus, so the horse jumped, throwing Bellerophon many miles to the ground. Bellerophon was not killed, as the gods wished for him to suffer further. Instead, he was crippled and left to wander the earth in search of his beloved Pegasus. Alas, Pegasus never returned to him.
Pride is right but fatal pride is dangerous is the result we got from mythologies as well as from history.
