BARRICADING the capital, using cargo containers to block roads, closing highways, breaking up protest rallies, banning public gatherings, arresting opposition supporters, raiding homes of opposition leaders, policing the media, orchestrating internet outages, suspending mobile network services and instituting cases against political opponents. That being the state of play today, what does it all indicate? It speaks of a siege mentality on the part of the government and establishment — a state in which they see themselves in constant danger and fearful all the time of being overwhelmed by opponents. This urges them to take strong-arm measures, not occasionally but incessantly.

Strong-arm actions do not signify a strong government. Instead, they signal weakness, a lack of self-confidence and, above all, a failure to address a political challenge by political means. It lays bare a government unsure of itself that has no political solution to a political problem. This, some would say, is not new and merely a throwback to past periods of repression and use of high-handed tactics from a familiar playbook. That may be so although one can argue that the present scale of authoritarian actions go much further than those witnessed under a civilian government before.

But the more important question is what it signifies about the present ruling hybrid coalition. When measures aimed to contain the opposition and dissenting voices involve the government routinely locking itself up, laying siege to itself and shutting itself off from ground realities, what does that really say? It reflects a government that desperately seeks to preserve power but implicitly acknowledges it does not have popular support or legitimacy and can only deal with opponents by using the state’s machinery of repression. It also tries to over-insure itself by efforts to control the streets, courts, parliament, media and the digital space.

The irony is that the more authorities try to control the more they feel they need to but the less they are able to. It becomes an endless game of whack-a-mole in which the presumed gains are transient and keep warranting more actions without any assurance of success in subduing the opposition or stifling criticism. A siege mentality has wide-ranging implications — for governance, politics, economy and for international perceptions of the country.

Strong-arm actions do not signify a strong government.

The implication for governance of a ‘siege mindset’ is that it preoccupies the ruling coalition at the expense of focusing on its actual obligations. The insecurity it engenders becomes a fatal distraction from governance as it involves constantly directing its attention and energy to confronting opponents and instituting measures to control them. Much of the narrative emanating from government ministers is more about the opposition’s ‘malign’ conduct, than about public policy or what they are delivering. Government performance suffers from an obsessive concern with seeking to upend and defeat opponents.

The political impact of a siege mentality has been no less deleterious. It has led to efforts to undermine institutions, curb their independence and weaken democracy itself. This has been evidenced by the way the ruling coalition has reduced parliament to a rubber stamp. Fearful of open debate, parliamentary proceedings have seen repeated attempts to muzzle opposition and critical voices. When the Speaker, otherwise acting as a pawn of the ruling party, is compelled to give opposition members an opportunity to speak, television channels are ‘advised’ to ignore or censor their remarks. Consequential legislation has been adopted without discussion — the 26th Constitutional Amendment being the latest case in point. Failure to implement the Supreme Court judgment on allocation of reserved seats to PTI is the most egregious example of the ruling coalition’s insecurity that has left parliament denuded of representative credentials and therefore legitimacy. Consequently, public confidence in parliamentary institutions has sunk to a new low.

A siege mentality regards independent institutions of any kind as a threat and danger. Such insecurity prompted the government to mount an assault on judicial independence. The constitutional amendment rammed through parliament by a panicky government fundamentally eroded the independence of the judiciary by making it subservient to the executive. The constitutional principle of the separation of powers was cast aside by a government afraid of unfavourable court verdicts.

The economic impact on an ailing economy is also significant. Frequent shutdowns and blockades of cities obviously hits businesses hard. Apart from working days lost to such lockdowns, delays in delivery of production material and export items exact a heavy economic price. Then there is the cost to the exchequer of deploying thousands of security forces to police the streets and renting shipping containers to prevent demonstrators from reaching their destination. This is estimated to run into millions of rupees.

The impact of internet disruptions and restrictions has also been far reaching. Again, there are economic costs of such actions for e-commerce and businesses that depend on the internet for their operation. The disruptions pose obvious difficulties for Pakistan’s burgeoning IT industry and sizeable online freelance workforce. This has prompted warnings from industry representatives such as the Pakistan Software Houses Association that the internet slowdown and blocking of VPNs would cripple the digital economy and become an “existential threat” for the IT industry.

An American expert from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation recently warned about the long-term risks to the economy by internet interruptions. These disruptions also block people’s access to financial, health and emergency services.

International perceptions of the country are adversely affected by all of the above. Frequent shutdowns of cities and businesses, internet controls and roads littered with containers convey an image of the country as unstable, insecure and unpredictable. This does nothing to encourage foreign investors; instead, it deters them. With businesses facing many obstacles and having to close down so often the country doesn’t appear to outsiders to be safe enough to do business in. Thus, the reputational damage to the country is immense.

All this should be reason for the government to review its authoritarian conduct and assess the damage its siege mentality is doing to the country. Above all, it should understand that it cannot secure itself in power by weakening institutions, restricting public access to the internet and taking undemocratic actions to curb the freedom of expression and people’s right to protest.

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.

Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2024