Pakistan needs national policy on security: Daily

Pakistan needs a national policy on security, a daily said Tuesday, stressing that "there has to be ownership of that policy right from the president of Pakistan down to the individual police constable".

"There is no doubt that there is a national crisis of security, with some parts of the country experiencing an almost daily degradation in terms of the quality of security for the ordinary person," said an editorial in the News International, two days after a carnage in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in which around 50 people were killed in bomb blasts.

The daily said that attacks have increased rather than decreased since the elections and the "state seems powerless to arrest, or in any way curtail the activities of, those responsible".

"If ever the state needed a national policy regarding security that was jointly owned and implemented at the federal and provincial levels, the time is now," it stressed.

The editorial observed that "it cannot be a security policy that differs from province to province other than in minor details to accommodate local conditions, and there has to be ownership of that policy right from the president of Pakistan down to the individual police constable".

The daily went on to rue the lack of coordination, "the eradication of corruption in the forces of law and order and most vitally a ruthless weeding out of those within the forces of law and order who are sympathisers or fellow-travellers with the terrorists".

"The translation of electoral rhetoric to concrete action within a compressed time frame using only the substandard materials that are at hand is nigh impossible. Yet now is the time for inspired leadership, and for bold and difficult decisions that get implemented in spite of a foot-dragging bureaucracy.

"As things stand today there is a sense of drift, of uncertainty and an unwillingness to grapple with uncomfortable realities. That needs to change. Quickly," it added.