THE honourable Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, in a special address to the Senate, (Nov 4), made some observations on our current national scenario.

What he said constitutes an axiom of political science that calls for attention to the backwardness of Third World countries, including Pakistan. The chief justice used the word `dysfunctional`, and coined a new phrase of `systemic dysfunction`.

Pakistan`s founder M. A. Jinnah even today stands out as the greatest proponent of impartial enforcement through autonomous public service bodies free from the social curse of politicisation of public services.

Almost six decades ago, when I was a teacher of political science before joining the civil service, I was fond of illustrating a pertinent point made by Prof. C.E.M. Joad, who states that one may place a man on a desert island and grant him every conceivable liberty in the universe, yet his so-called `total freedom` would be a fiction in the absence of opportunity a total nullity! Similarly, when there is no proper enforcement, law itself becomes a nullity ! Hence, this basic point holds good today that all public services must be duly vested with `independence of decision-making` and it is then alone that these can be fairly taken into account if wrongdoing is alleged.

Our subsequent political rulers have perpetrated just the opposite. The inevitable recoil is the manifest misgovernance. Our current crisis is of `institutional vacuum`, which inevitably means many steps backward for every step taken forward.

I hope and pray that the apex court may issue a landmark judicial diktat in our dangerous and volatile national imbroglio.

Rafiq Hussain Agha Karachi