The 27th constitutional amendment in Pakistan - A culture of accountability, a politics of faith

I think it’s fair to question the impact of the 27th Amendment in the Pakistani Constitution — the immunity it creates for power circles, especially in a country already struggling with deep inequalities. 

But in many ways, what’s happening in Pakistan is simply mirroring the global political order. An order that has been preaching human rights and equality since World War II, yet the transparency of digital space and the accessibility of information have exposed the gap between the rhetoric and the reality. 

The global order, much like our societies, still operates with a caveman mentality. It is ego-driven, individualistic, and survival-based. 

And when systems operate from that place, the policies, the culture, the reforms — all of it reflects the same instinctive hunger to protect power, not to redistribute it. 

When I think about Pakistan, I keep returning to the question of what a solution at home could look like. For me, it begins with a rigorous adoption of a culture of accountability, first within our homes and then extending outward. 

A cultural shift that rejects the caveman impulse — the one that offers the most powerful immunity from being questioned. 

It asks us to treat justice as something absolute, something that does not bend for status, might, or the sustaining capacity of any authority. 

But none of this is possible without faith. 

Faith that if you do the right thing, you will survive. 

Faith that accountability will not isolate you. 

And we can only sustain that kind of faith if we build communities that actually have each other’s backs. Communities where, if any one of us is unable to create momentum, many more step in — not just for the movement but for the community itself. 

This shift asks all of us to learn diplomacy, dialogue, strategy, assertiveness, and restorative justice. Because division makes control easier. 

The truth is, we struggle with faith. 

We talk about it constantly, but we don’t know how to embody it. 

Yet faith is one of the strongest forces we have access to, because it builds resilience from the inside out. 

When we start practicing faith, accountability, and protective community, another capacity grows almost naturally: discernment. 

Only then can we clearly recognize who is worthy of governing us. 

Only then do we develop the collective strength to exercise our rights instead of outsourcing our agency to individuals we hope will save us. 

Movements and democracies require people who can see through power plays, who can sense integrity, who have enough backbone — built through community — to reject leaders who rely on fear, immunity, and spectacle.

But right now, after generations navigating existential survival — from the long history of dispossession to the constant threat of political collapse — our capacity to envision has been drained. That’s why we cling to personalities instead of principles, saviors instead of systems, individuals instead of imagination. We forget that we are made of the same mettle we keep searching for in others. 

Only when we rebuild that inner and collective strength can we create a resilient and ethical polity — one capable of influencing the global political order instead of being shaped and swallowed by it.

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