‘The writ of the state’

This is apropos an article “The writ of the state” carried by the newspaper yesterday. The writer, Rashed Rahman, has described the PTI government’s decision to cut a deal with the protesters as surrender of state. He has argued, among other things, that “Imran Khan’s address to the country before departing for China promised the writ of the state would be enforced while appealing to these obscurantist forces not to compel the state to do its duty against threats to or actual loss of lives, property, etc. However, when the day dawned, the TLP and affiliated militants were accorded the virtual run of the country to destroy cars, terrorise citizens travelling on the highways, blockade main arteries, disrupt normal life, commerce, and what have you. In other words, for three days the country belonged to the extremist anarchists and it appeared that the state had disappeared (far from in the Marxian sense however).”

The writer appears to be less generous about the fact that addressing the nation in response to the protest and concomitant dangers was no mean action on the part of a newly-elected prime minister. The situation therefore gives birth to certain questions. The first question is about the role of two previous governments in relation to similar situations or protests. What actions did the then President Asif Ali Zardari initiate following the murder of the then Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer? Didn’t he surrender? What was the response of the PML-N government to the same religious group that had held Islamabad and Rawalpindi hostage for several weeks? There would be a one-word answer to this question: appeasement. Insofar as the question whether or not the state disappeared in the Marxian sense is concerned, I’m sure the situation had not played out, even remotely, in accordance with Friedrich Engel’s “Withering away of the state” concept.

Quetta Nadir Shah