By Haleema Sadia
Reposing all authority in one institution or person is dangerous. We can see its adverse consequences in Pakistan where few individuals and institutions are all-powerful. Here intelligence agency tap phone calls, army practice political engineering, and judges ratify coups with impunity. Powerful individuals and institutions are not held accountable for their actions. Reposing too much authority in one person would be right if there was no possibility of him or her ever making mistakes that most people do.
The truth is that all humans are prone to err and that no matter how good one’s justification is in support of one’s stance or opinion being true, its never so good to be beyond any doubt. Many beliefs which were once considered true, proved wrong. Thus humans even at best have fallible knowledge. The history of empirical science reveals that many scientific theories, once deemed unquestionable, have been eventually supplanted by others. After all scientific theories are created by fallible humans too. Anaxagoras, a Pre-Socratic Greek Philosophers, propounded a belief that everything is infinitely divisible.
Later the people subscribed to atomists belief that things are composed of atoms which are indivisible and indestructible. Hundred of years later scientists are finding smaller and smaller particles frequently. The result of considering one authority infallible is disastrous. Dark ages ensued when people continued believing that the Church’s view which coincides with Aristotelian geocentric view of world is surely true. Galileo and others who piled humongous evidence against this view were persecuted. Consequently little to no intellectual and scientific development occurred during dark ages when church account of world events were believed to be infallibly true.
Humans are error prone because their memory and senses are unreliable. Moreover their cognitive power is limited and they develop biases which impede their ability to give faultless judgements. One person knowledge resembles a ship with cracks, and other skilled artisan or people can come in handy to repair those cracks. So group decision making can be more advantageous. Hence Pakistan need to distribute power at every level. The power to constitute benches must not lie with just one judge.
Similarly all powers should not reside in just one institution. Currently Pakistan situation resembles that of Sudan. Here too the all-powerful individuals and elites are fighting to stay in power, delaying elections, wiretapping private conversations, etcetera without any regard for poor masses. One reason of all this mess is that the power is concentrated at one place or position. Power need to be decentralised or the situation will worsen.
