In this country little, if anything, of substance ever gets done right in public life. Or at least so runs the common perception. Hence, a manifest need to appoint worthy Commission to investigate and advise upon matters of concern to millions of ordinary citizens, issues like corruption in high office, assassination of political leaders, ethnic or sectarian riots, public calamities or national disgrace and so on.
Unfortunately, however, our leaders’ professed purpose in uncovering the full facts f any case is matched only by their cold resolve to conceal the truth from people at large. And all this, we are informed, is in our larger “national interest”. What is this cryptic national interest, who defines it and why it is invariably at odds with our right to know in a democratic society has never been satisfactorily explained or justified.
This, apparently, it is not even in our self-interest to know why, for example, a particular bus, train or air disaster should have occurred, nor who should be held accountable and why. Certainly, we are presumed to be much better off remaining clueless about the assassinations of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan or President Zia ul Haq and have no business seeking to know who sought to benefit from their exits. Even more inconceivable it is that we should be burdened with the wretched details of the Ojri camp explosions — why hundred of innocent people lost their lives, who was responsible for this savage negligence, and what deterrents were provided subsequently to avoid such a catastrophe again.
Imagine our start, therefore, at waking up one fine morning, nearly two decades after the event, and peeking into some of the conclusions of the elusive Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report on the tragedy of East Pakistan in 1971. For which small, belated mercy, we may rightly suppose, the public should be singularly grateful to an outspoken journalist like Mr Mushaid Hussain rather than to those political leaders who commissioned this report and later conspired, one after the other, to suppress its findings.
From the few paragraphs of the Report which have seen the light of print, we might reasonably ask what is so sacred or startling about the infractions or privatisations in battle of some Generals of the Pakistan army in 1971. Indeed, if truth be told, much worse is known about our armed forces in times of peace than in times of war, and that too is no more alarming than some of the shameless misdemeanors of certain of our civilian stalwarts. But by protecting the black sheep in their ranks, our men in khaki have done themselves, and the country whose honour they defend, irreparable harm — the fiction of speculation in a closed society is more corrosive than the fact of truth in an open one. Gen Mirza Aslam Beg’s commendable policy of glasnost is unfortunately a case of too little, too late.
By burying the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report, the state has shielded the principal actors who are instrumental in destroying the country and traumatising our psyche. Its publication in full will serve a most important role: the earnest debate which will inevitably erupt is as likely to highlight the strengths of the Report as its more glaring inadequacies. Thus, while we can expect to confirm no more than our worst suspicions about the military junta of those times, we are certain to uncover new facts and evidence about the role of certain politicians who have thus far escaped censure at the expense of the armed forces.
All this will doubtless be to the country’s good. It is never too late to set the record straight. As part of the social contract between the state and the people, government should be demystified, responsibilities fixed, public debate encouraged and confidences rebuilt.
In a functioning democracy, there should be no sacred cows, no select accountability trials, no secret reports about matters which affect the moral fibre of a nation. Good government is open government in which the state serves the people rather than the other way round. Protecting felons or condoning corruption are, if anything, more unparadonable than proven acts of treachery or criminal commission.