Feroz R Khan September 9, 2002

Tags: Law , Economics , Coup , Elections , Independence , Constitution , Government , Military , Autocracy , Democracy , Conservative , Politics , Pakistan , Bhutto

Elections in Pakistan: A day of burial or a day of resurrection?

rel="tag" href="/tag/democracy">democracy, as elections will be held to determine the new landscape of Pakistani politics. The question posed, which the October elections will seek to settle, is not whether democracy can thrive in Pakistan, but whether this political “experiment” by the military government will be ranked as just another landmark failure in the history of Pakistan. The process of instituting democracy, in Pakistan, in the past has always been stunted. Democracy seems like a dream in Pakistan, because the Pakistani political tradition dislikes a plurality of opinions – a sine qua non for a successful democratic tradition in Pakistan. Historically, democracy has failed in Pakistan because Pakistani politics have been unable to institutionalize dissent in the political arena. The failure of the democratic tradition in Pakistan has been a testament to the non-cooperative attitude of the political parties, which are more willing to compromise in order to deny power to their rivals than they are willing to share power with each other.

It was this autocratic impulse, on the part of the last prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, that allowed the military to intervene in Pakistani politics for the third time and implement a “politically correct” martial law in the country. Even though Nawaz Sharif was democratically elected, his policies were more aimed at silencing dissent against his authoritarian rule masked by a democratic façade. In a similar sense, Benazir Bhutto, the prime minister of Pakistan before Sharif, considered democracy as a political veil to hide the true nature of her personalized rule; a rule, which was more interested in the principle of denying power than in sharing it. The so-called “Decade of Democracy” in Pakistan (1988-1999) in which both Nawaz Sharif and Benzair Bhutto were twice elected as prime ministers of Pakistan (and twice dismissed by the president) was nothing more than a series of personalized autocracies legitimized under, and by, a prostituted process of democracy in Pakistan.

What ended the “Decade of Democracy” in Pakistan was the political gambit, which Sharif undertook to deny power to a political institution that had always considered itself as primus inter pares in Pakistani politics: the Pakistan Army. In ordering the dismissal of Pervez Musharraf, the Chief of Army Staff, Sharif was hoping to curtail the powers of the army in Pakistan and in the process end the army’s influence in politics. His fatal miscalculation in this matter was that the Pakistani army preferred denying power to others, but did not like power being denied to itself. The army’s response was swift and it removed Sharif in a bloodless coup d’ état and took over the reins of power in Pakistan. Since that day in October 1999, the present military interregnum has been attempting to institutionalize the role of the armed forces in the Pakistani politics. The military’s attempt to institutionalize a role for itself is an admission to a reality in Pakistani politics. The military has always acted as the bridge, in the politics, which has facilitated the transfer of power from one political party to another. Hence, in the present scenario, the military wishes to legalize its role in politics as the fulcrum of the political balance of power in Pakistan and an institution, which is capable of managing a sanitized and legalized form of political power in Pakistan.

Consequently, the political landscape that will emerge after the October 2002 elections will mirror this reality of the Pakistani politics. The role of the military in Pakistani politics, though it has always been a historic disaster for Pakistan, cannot be avoided, due to the lack of a viable mechanism in politics, which allows peaceful transfers of power. The sad irony of the Pakistani political experience is that the democratically elected parties of Pakistan are loath to transfer power democratically to another political party. Due to this inability of political parties to transfer power peacefully and legally, the military is forced to intervene and end the political gridlock, which usually results as the country has to endure periods of political instability and political crisis resulting from the political parties refusal to share power in a democratic manner. Hence, the military’s aim in the elections, and in its immediate aftermath, is to create a political system in the country, which gives the military the legal ability to transfer power in politics. Thus, avoid the usual political infightings that results each time there is a change of power in Pakistan.

It is this reality of the Pakistani politics, which the constitutional reforms of the present military government are specifically designed for - to give a dejure status and a political-legal cover to the military’s new role in Pakistani power politics. This in turn raises the question, whether the constitutional reforms undertaken by the military are designed with the intention to restore a semblance of democracy in Pakistan or they are fashioned with the traditional Machiavellian aim, in Pakistani politics, to monopolize power. The prima facie utility of the constitutional reforms would suggest that they were introduced and the constitution was amended to strengthen the process of democracy in Pakistan and prevent the process of democracy from being abused for aggrandizement of personal power.

However, in an Orwellian sense, the suggested constitutional reforms of the military, under the assumption of increasing the resilience of democracy in Pakistan, will only make matters worse by weakening the process of democracy in Pakistan. This process, undertaken by the present government, will just end up aggrandizing power in the hands of one person and one institution at expense of other political institutions in the country. In doing so, it will merely make the distinction between the self-styled democratic military government and the past democratic dictators of Pakistan an opaque irony.

Though the idea of these reforms may be beneficial, it still does not answer the question how these reforms are going to help the process of political plurality in Pakistan. This is a critical question, which demands an immediate answer. There is an urgent need to address this question, because it would seem that end result of these reforms would be to institute an autocracy in Pakistan in the name of a democracy. Under the newly envisaged reforms, Pervez Musharraf would end up as being the most powerful autocrat in the history of the nation. In a pragmatic sense, these constitutional reforms seem destined to be prelude for another military intervention in Pakistani politics. By consecrating power in the person of Musharraf himself, they will invariably set the stage for another political power struggle to fill the vacuum that would be created, when Musharraf would eventually leave politics.

Granted that there is validity to the argument that power will only be concentrated with a single person, Musharraf, for a certain period. According to this argument, Musharraf will be an all-powerful leader of Pakistan for a limited time. The argument suggests, that once the “true essence” of democracy has devolved and permeated to the political grass root levels in Pakistan, Musharraf will hand over power to the duly elected representatives and thus, democracy will emerge in Pakistan, paradoxically, from within an autocratic system of governance. This in turn raises two more questions. One; will power be transferred from Musharraf to the elected representatives in a peaceful manner and secondly, will Musharraf trust the judgement of the electorate if it goes against his own judgement. A major perceptional problem, with the constitutional reforms, is they are more than likely to harm the democratic process by creating political uncertainty in Pakistan.

However, if the intention of the present government is to exploit this uncertainty, then these reforms are enacted more with the intention of denying power than sharing power – a necessary pre-condition towards a successful implementation of democracy in Pakistan.

The consequences of this could prove to be disastrous for Pakistan, because it would be merely repeating the past history of Pakistan. In fact, it would be responsible for institutionalizing the past political mistakes in the country instead of correcting them, as argued by the military. Another consequence of these constitutional reforms would be that instead of altering and amending the flawed system of politics in Pakistan, they would be simply reinforcing failure. Democracy has never been able to thrive in Pakistan, because the centralized nature of power discourages a plurality of expression and the concentration of power, autocratically in Pakistan, is always pregnant with the possibility of a potential power struggle. Political power struggles are endemic in Pakistan, because by depositing power exclusively with one person, Pakistan has never been able to articulate a system of transferring, or sharing, power peacefully. In this sense, the politics in Pakistan have always been prone to confrontations over the issues of political power and its equitable distributions.

Democracy cannot evolve in Pakistan unless the political system in Pakistan learns to devolve power and accepts the fact that political orthodoxy and centralized authority does not engender democratic norms. Democracy can only flourish in Pakistan, when the politics in the country are liberalized and favor a plurality of dissenting opinions in the political discourse of the nation. Plurality of political opinion implies that state exhibits a high degree of tolerance towards dissent and more importantly, considers itself politically secure enough to allow political dissent. It has been the bane of Pakistan’s history that most of its political problems have originated from its conservative interpretation of centralized power structures and their political utility in the terms of perpetuating oligarchies of power. Due to this reason, Pakistan has suffered politically and will continue to suffer accordingly until it, as a state, is willing to decentralize power and starts to question the conflicting nature of its political orthodoxy.

In this sense, the debate in Pakistan over the introduction of political “checks and balances” is an academic one. The reason being that in a realistic sense, a credible system of political checks and balances is based on the institutional independence and integrity of a nation’s political institutions and not on the issues of individualism. Unfortunately, Musharraf, by devolving the majority of powers to himself, is undermining the very legitimacy of political accountability, which he had promised to introduce in the Pakistani politics. In the present political scenario the nature of political accountability, by the virtue of being concentrated in one person, has created an impression of a political immunity. This will, rightly or wrongly, in the long run merely reinforce the perception that the hallmark of Pakistani politics is not a willingness to tolerate plurality, but to institute regimentation in the political discourse.

The concentration of power also implies that the present constitutional and economic reforms’ longevity is directly proportional to Musharraf’s political tenure. If this were true, it would suggest dire consequences for Pakistan. It would mean that after Musharraf’s exist from politics, not only will Pakistan find itself embroiled in another power struggle, but also the reforms of the military government might be reversed. In a more critical sense Pakistan would be, politically speaking, exactly where it was on October 12, 1999. In other words, three years of political experimentation would have ended without Pakistan having progressed towards a more democratically sustainable political system. This in turn would suggest Pakistani politics reverting to their traditionally antagonistic power denial struggles. Hence, creating the political conditions for the armed forces continual involvement in Pakistani politics at the cost of the democratic process in the country.

The only logical way out of this cul-de-sac would be the eventual process of devolution of power in Pakistan and empowerment of non-traditional areas of politics in the Pakistani society. One of methodologies of political empowerment in Pakistan is economic de-centralization and de-nationalization of government owned institutions. The realm of economics, like everything else in Pakistan, is a state owned monopoly, which is prone to a serious misallocation of national resources. Accordingly, the economy in Pakistan suffers from a serious mismanagement and an absence of economic foresight. The nature of Pakistani economy; its ability to adapt and evolve with the changing market forces, both in a regional and a global sense, is heavily straitjacketed by the bureaucratic control exerted over it that, in many ways, its resembles the command economies of the communist era. This bureaucratic rigidity and the centralized nature of the Pakistani economy has, as a proportional response to this economic myopia, created a parallel economy in Pakistan, which is capitalistic and driven by the exigencies of the market forces.

The existence of two parallel economies in Pakistan has greatly aided in the fissuring and polarization of the society. Thus, the issues of social justice; of crime and punishment and of poverty and wealth are so stark that Pakistani societal values are more identifiable by their social inequalities rather than their equalities. This mutated division of economic wealth in Pakistan, with increasing poverty and a limited section of the population controlling the economics of the nation has weakened the political fabric of the Pakistani society and has created a political rift within the society itself. The emerging economic situation of Pakistan and not the constitutional and political reforms of devolution of power are the keys towards enabling a sustainable culture of democracy in Pakistan. Political power, in the modern terminology, is the translation of economic wealth into political influence and without an economic base, political power is shallow and weak. Political devolution of power in Pakistan is meaningless unless it is accompanied by economic empowerment of the economically unrepresentative segments of the Pakistani population and they are effectively integrated into the economic life of the nation.

Since the issue of constitutional reforms and political “checks and balances” in Pakistan are being undertaken without any corresponding economic reforms, it suggests that the new political culture in Pakistan will be more timocratic and timocracy will underline the new orthodoxy of Pakistani political reality. Due to this, the interaction of centralized and autocratic political power coupled with economically dominated oligarchies will isolate vast sections of the Pakistani society. This isolation, based on the interpretation of a culture of political and economic apartheid, will reinforce resentment, because of its policies of denial and ostracism making it very difficult to inoculate a democratic political and/or economic consensus in the country.

In order to avoid this situation from developing, power has to be economically devolved in Pakistan and the constitutional reforms should be undertaken with the express intent of making the political discourse in Pakistan more inclusive towards the dissenting opinions. Economic allocation of wealth in Pakistan has to be distributed in a manner, which causes the economic empowerment of the people and not only this, but this distribution of wealth gives them the plurality of political representation, which ensures their economic rights within the Pakistani society.

Presently, there is no political mechanism in the country, which would facilitate this metamorphoses of the Pakistani politics and thus, this process is the sine qua non of a sustainable system of political representation in Pakistan, without which democracy will continually flounder in Pakistan. To attain this end, Pakistan needs a stable, enduring period of political transition from its past traditions of political and economic egoism to a system of political and economic altruism. The present government is ideally suited for this task and it can implement this aim, if it has the foresight and the wisdom to look beyond its own interests of political insularity. Hence, the present government and this military interlude in Pakistani politics has the potential to end up being worth while if, in a Machiavellian dictum, it has the political will to make its ends justify its intended means.

If the end of this political experiment is a workable concept of democracy in Pakistan, then the government is excused, but not necessarily condoned, to undertake those political and economic reforms, which are sorely needed. It should refrain from undertaking those political actions, which are expedient because political expediency in the final analysis only helps in fostering political mistakes and Pakistan no longer has the luxury, after 55 years, to indulge in or afford any more political mistakes. The first step in this process, to bring about a sustainable democratic form of government in Pakistan, is political compromise and not political confrontations. This government and its package of political, constitutional, and economic reforms will end up as a failure unless it includes the political parties in the process of deliberating upon the nature of problems and challenges facing Pakistan.

Furthermore, this government can aid the democratic process in the country by making the act of participation in the politics easier and not difficult. More than anything else, this government should shun the advice, which encourages believe in its own infallibility and disabuse itself from the notion that it has the monopoly and knows what is the correct solution to Pakistan’s myriad political problems.
This government should realize that it cannot solve all of Pakistan’s problems by itself, but can help in the process if it is willing to listen, learn and accept help from other participants in the Pakistani political discourse.

October 10, 2002 will be the answer to the question if democracy can be resurrected in Pakistan or whether this political experiment of engineering a democratic process will only be prelude to another political experiment to correct the flaws of a previously failed political experiment. October 10, 2002 will also be the final vote, in a manner of speaking, which will decide as to who has the wisdom to conduct the future political experiments. It is sincerely hoped that the people of Pakistan conduct the next political experiment in Pakistan. It is hoped that the results of the October 10, 2002 elections will be allowed to evolve democratically and will not be aborted once again and the people of Pakistan should be the final judges of this experiment, which will start after October 10, 2002 in Pakistan.

Can this be wished in Pakistan?

The past history of the nation would suggest otherwise. If the past is bleek and the present is uncertain, with the prospects of a questionalble future, then the only salvation is to hope against the odds. Hoping against the odds is what the Pakistanis have to look forward to after October 2002 and since they have no influence over their own destinies, what else can they hope for?