Has democracy failed in Pakistan?

Not quite
While we can safely conclude that the military rule has been
a disaster for Pakistan we cannot pass any judgment as to
how Pakistan would have fared under democracy for we
have no evidence to support such predictions

''Oh democracy has failed in Pakistan and military rule has been better'', is a common thought
prevalent among Pakistanis. The idea is a fallacy and the reason for this misconception is
twofold:

1. The mistaken belief that democratic rule should solve all of Pakistan's problems within 2
years.

2. Democracy has actually been tried in Pakistan.

The discussion about no 1 is not required because it is rather daft to expect that chronic problems
of over-population, poverty, power, religious fanaticism etc can be solved within months or even
ever by democracy, so I will leave it for now but would like to discuss if there ever was a
genuine experiment with democracy in the history of Pakistan.

And before we do that let us have a brief stroll through the history of Pakistan:

Pakistan came into being in August 1947. It was created by a party called Muslim League which
though had existed since 1906 had only started demanding Pakistan in 1940. The ML never was
a true political party of the masses. So much so that in 1937 elections, the first western style
elections in India for self rule in provinces, the League did not even have any local branches in
major provinces like Bengal and created parliamentary boards (ad-hoc) to take part! After its
disastrous performance in the elections provincial ML chapters were established but instead of
grass root level work ML decided to recruit ready-made local politicians and thus convinced
Punjabi feudal and Bengali businessmen to join it. Once Pakistan was achieved ML found that
the majority of her top leaders were from areas that were now in India and thus had no local
constituencies in what was Pakistan. As a result, these leaders had little interest in developing
real democracy in Pakistan. As a result neither were any national elections held nor did they
agree on a democratic constitution (or even any constitution) for Pakistan. And when they did
manage to form some sort of constitution in 1956 it lasted only a few months and before any
elections could be held General Ayub Khan proclaimed martial law and cancelled the
constitution. In the 10 years or so that Ayub was in power he more or less destroyed any chances
for Pakistan to become a real democracy. The establishment of democratic institutions was
suppressed and the only route for politicians to enter politics was through sleeping with the
military and hence that is how ZA Bhutto started his political career. Ayub was followed by the
disastrous couple of years under Yahya which led to a civil war and separation of Eastern Wing
and through this the Punjabis managed to solve the issue of dealing with a Bengali majority in a
united Pakistan. While Bhutto did have some democratic pretences his paranoid personality
prevented him from working to establish real democracy in Pakistan and instead he tried to
appease mullah and military which eventually considered him as a threat and got rid of him.
Enter General Zia ul Haq for another 10 plus years of military rule, and while Ayub had more or
less destroyed any chance of Pakistan becoming a democracy, he had at least tried to make
Pakistan modern and progressive but Zia, while putting in the last few nails in the coffin of
democracy also proceeded to destroy any chance of Pakistan becoming a modern, progressive
and secular nation leaving behind a medieval theocracy with rules and laws more suited to the
10th rather than the 20th century! The period since then has seen a few short spells of pseudo-
democracies under PP or ML-N as well as another long spell of martial law by Mush.

Now the question is why do I consider that Pakistan has never really had any real democracy?
And here the issue is that it is thought that to qualify as a democracy a state has to fulfil just one
criteria, which is that it should hold elections and thus elect its government - this is a
misconception. While elections are an essential component of democracy they are not the sole
tick-box for it. For besides elections a democracy needs to have:

1. Democratic institutions

2. A constitution that promotes democracy

3. And a culture of democracy

And sadly, none of the above three exists in Pakistan.

As I have mentioned before, the party that made Pakistan was never a political party in the real
democratic sense, and remained so after Pakistan. The other parties that were active in political
field were based either on religion or ethnicity. ZAB's PPP was and more or less still remains the
only national party that had workers at the grass root levels but was hampered by ZAB's
personality issues. And while many would disagree with me I feel Pakistan's best chance at
becoming a democratic nation was Benazir's first government. For all her faults and failures BB
was not a first generation feudal like her father, was intelligent and highly educated, had been
steadfast under military persecution and above all had the ability to forgive those who had done
her wrong. But she simply had too much stacked against her. Still, in the end, her enemies had to
physically eliminate her, something that sealed Pakistan's fate for good.

So what do we have now? Well, the military controls Pakistan's foreign and strategic affairs
directly. It also controls the economy indirectly leaving the politicians, even if they are elected
with just enough cash which can only be used to enrich themselves. Political institutes do not
exist, as we can see, ZAB and present PM both entered politics through the patronage of military
dictators and were/can be eliminated by the military whenever it feels like. The constitution,
though given the whitewash of democracy has been totally hamstrung by the religious laws
inserted in it and the judiciary is either compliant with the non-democratic, theocratic laws or is
so scared of the mullah and military that it does not dare to oppose them.
And while it is essential in a democracy to have all citizens constitutionally equal and having
equal access to power this is legally blocked by Islam being the state religion and non-Muslims
not appoint able to the posts of President, Prime Minister and Chief of Army Staff.

There is no culture of democracy among the population, as mentioned before many are critical of
the record of democratic governments (democratic only as far as being elected) and consider this
as a flaw of democracy, interestingly the same refuse to accept that the widespread atrocities
committed in the name of religion should be blamed on religion and thus do not allow the same
defence to democracy!

The prevalence of religion in the society is a further hurdle to develop cultural democracy as it
was not practiced in the times of the Prophet and thus is considered unnecessary due to the
widespread misconception that Islam was completed to perfection in 632 AD and does not need
to evolve or improve.

Another major hurdle is that while Pakistan came into being as a federation of diverse ethnic
units, the military and militarized politicians have made it into a centralized state where power is
held by Punjabi and Urdu speakers and Sandhi, Balochi, Pakhton, Saraiki etc. are kept out of
power. No institution like the US senate exists to protect the ethnic minorities from being abused
by the Punjabi majority which is prevalent in both military and political spheres.

Given the above situation I do not agree with the belief that democracy has failed in Pakistan. In
my opinion, democracy has never been tried in Pakistan. The few half hearted attempts at it were
sabotaged by the military or the military-mullah alliance and something that has never been tried
cannot be called a failure.

And thus while we can safely conclude that the military rule has been a disaster for Pakistan we
cannot pass any judgment as to how Pakistan would have fared under democracy for we have no
evidence to support such predictions.

The Failure of Democracy

'Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.'
Winston Churchill

Ironically, the most accurate definition of what democracy should be was given in an Adolf Hitler speech
(I don’t know who wrote it, Hitler certainly didn’t have the intellectual capability to come up with it
himself): ‘The state does not command us, we command the state!’ (‘Nicht der Staat befiehlt uns, wir
befehlen dem Staat!’)

Democracy means ‘Government by the People’ (or, if the creators of this term employed the sarcastic
undertone suggested by some historians, ‘Government by the Mob’). That definition implies that all
members of a community participate in the electoral process; but this is not the case.
The first rule of democracy is exclusion. No country in the world would want all its residents to choose its
government, and until this day people have been excluded from elections because of their age, race, class,
gender, nationality, religion, homelessness, illiteracy, criminal convictions, lack of landownership, mental
diseases etc.
And it’s not only voters who are being excluded, but parties and candidates as well. Most countries won’t
allow a party to compete in the elections who intends to change the political system or whose views differ
too greatly from that of the ruling parties; thus the United States and all its satrapies simply offer a choice
between the far right and the extreme right.
In countries whose citizens had no influence on the form of government by having been excluded from
the shaping of the constitution (or ‘basic law’, as in Germany) the general attitude was that a vote for any
admitted party denotes approval of the form of government, so that a turnout of over 50% was considered
a vote for the political system.
This changed with the constantly dropping numbers of voters for the European Parliament - which is a
farce as all important decisions are made by the heads of state (the European Council), anyway. Since
1999 the turnout for European elections has been way under 50%, which, following the logic of the
argument, should be considered a vote against the European oligarchy.

Apart from banning parties there are many other ways of preventing change. In Germany the emergence
of new parties is obstructed by the 5% Clause; any vote for a party that ends up with less than 5%
becomes null and void, and the established parties successfully warn the electorate not to ‘throw away
their vote’. Thus the three established parties managed to keep the parliament to themselves until in 1983
the Green Party managed to break the monopoly and join the club.
The 5% Clause leads to a good part of the electorate not being represented. In the extreme case of some
twenty parties having under five per cent each, one single party could get all seats with just 5% of the
votes, leaving 95% of the electorate without representation.

In the 2000 US elections George W. Bush won due to the electoral system, although his opponent got the
majority of votes (patronisingly being called the popular vote). And the ‘loss’ of thousands of absentee
ballots is a regular feature in US elections that’s hardly deemed worth mentioning.
In Ireland the 2004 presidential elections were prevented by the main parties who simply agreed on
confirming the president for another term; elections, they stated, would have been too expensive. – Well,
elections are always expensive, so maybe this cancellation will ring in the end of that farce called
democracy altogether.

‘Rule by the people’ also suggests that people not only decide on their government but also on political
issues. This implies that the public could enforce referenda on all topics they feel differently about than
their government. But most ‘democracies’ do not give their citizens that opportunity.
The most stressed argument against referenda (apart from the silly ‘We’d have a referendum each day!’)
is the immaturity or lack of political insight of the electorate. But if the population lack maturity or
political insight, why trust them with electing their masters in the first place?

The idea of democracy was to give people the right to choose their own government. Now people have
realised that their vote doesn’t make a difference, and more and more stay away from the polls. As an
unmotivated electorate calls into question the whole concept of democracy, politicians preach that casting
his vote is every citizen’s obligation (for those who have one, that is) and treating those refusing to vote
as disinterested outcasts.
Some countries, like Australia, even go one step further by punishing non-voters and imposing fines on
those who don’t feel represented by (or simply don’t trust) the admitted parties and candidates. I don’t
think I have to point out the paradox of forcing people to exercise their rights.

Democracy is government for the highest bidder. Not all countries practise the baksheesh tradition as
openly as Costa Rica or Ireland, but when we hear about the innumerable indications (and the odd
conviction) of bribery, corruption, embezzlement, favouritism, self-service, abuse of power etc, we all
know that this is not even the tip but a mere splinter of the iceberg. Whatever they tell us, people don’t go
into politics to look after others; and the few who actually put their beliefs and principles above their bank
accounts are soon found out and consequently will not make it into the decision-making elite of their
parties, anyway.

An election promise is a contract between the candidate and his potential voters: You give me your vote,
and I will protect your interests. As with any contract, the stronger side makes sure to keep the upper
hand: a tenant has to pay a deposit to the landlord before moving in, an employee has to work for a couple
of weeks before getting paid (which, in fact, is a deposit he pays to his employer), and the voter has to
cast his vote before he can expect to be represented.
If a plumber doesn’t show up on the agreed date I can terminate the contract; if I hire a cleaning woman
who doesn’t clean I can fire her; if I vote for a candidate who claims to introduce free medical care for
senior citizens and who doesn’t I’m fucked. An election promise is the only contract in the world that is
not binding, and politicians make sure it stays that way.

Democracy has also brought the delegation of governmental crime. In other forms of government the
ruling class are free to do and take whatever they want, even if it is against their own laws. In a
democracy, theoretically, the government could be held responsible for its crimes; on top of that voters
might remember at the next election. Therefore it rather tolerates crime on a great scale, provided that it
gets its share without being brought into connection with it. Organised crime is a product of democracy,
and organised crime would not be possible without the support of the authorities.

In 6256 RT (2015 CE), amidst the corporate takeover of Europe which was initiated by several
governments’ policy of bailing out bankrupt banks at the cost of taxpayers and the general low-income
population, and which led to the sale of state assets, the privatisation of services and the undermining and
cessation of social security and employment legislation (a policy called ‘austerity’ which only applied to
non-millionaires), Greece elected a government on an anti-austerity platform which promised to re-
introduce social security, reverse unjust cuts and let corporations and tycoons bear a part of the burden
they created. However, their financial masters told them it could never be and forced them to impose the
very policies they had so vehemently opposed. This is how the ‘cradle of democracy’ became the coffin
of democracy.
If nothing else does, this clearly demonstrates that democracy is a puppet play intended to give us the
illusion that we have a say in our lives.

Also in 6256 RT (2015 CE) the Irish government introduced an extra water charge in a buildup to
privatise the water supply. 57% of all households refused to pay the double charge; this is a majority, and
in a democracy - by definition – decisions are made by the majority. The Irish government, however,
pressed ahead with the extra charge.

Democracy is the god above Christ, Yahweh, Allah and Buddha - the one who can’t be questioned
because he creates the illusion of capitalism serving the people rather than the other way round.
Democracy has brought us Hitler and Kennedy, the men responsible for the nastiest wars of the last
century. Democracy has encouraged and even caused racism, genocide, exploitation, intolerance,
inequality and so forth.

Democracy has failed us - and no, I can’t offer an alternative. But if given the choice of entering the arena
with a bull, a lion or a gladiator, I won’t automatically choose the gladiator just because he has a human
face. I certainly don’t favour monarchy, tyranny, oligarchy or any other form of government over
democracy - but neither would I choose democracy, at least in the form it presents itself today, over the
rest!
Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan: Positive
Evolution or More of the Same?
Civilian governance in Pakistan has never lasted longer than eleven years. 2019 is the eleventh
year since General Pervez Musharraf resigned the presidency and fears of a coup may exist, but
one is not probable—at least not in the near-term future. In fact, two recent Chiefs of Army Staff
(COAS)—Generals Kayani and Raheel in 2009 and 2014, respectively—considered taking, but
decided not to take, direct control of the government. These decisions demonstrate that military
rule is no longer necessary because the Army has already attained its major goals of de facto
control of the country’s nuclear and missile programs, key foreign relationships, the military
budget, and national security decision-making. In effect, the military has achieved what I have
previously termed a “coup-less coup.” Instead of the traditionally fraught civil-military
relationship, it seems that, for the first time in Pakistan’s turbulent history, the government and
military agree on the three major issues facing Pakistan: domestic politics, the economy, and
India. However, key variables, such as economic stability, could quickly change the course of
this relationship.

While the Army has not eschewed intervening in domestic politics in recent years, it has
cooperated more with Islamabad’s civilian leadership. Knowledgeable observers believe it was
involved in both ousting former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 2017 and tipping the electoral
scales in favor of Imran Khan in 2018. After a year in power, and still facing daunting economic
and domestic political challenges, Prime Minister Khan has established a smooth working
relationship with General Headquarters (GHQ). Khan granted General Qamar Bajwa a full three-
year extension as COAS, made him a member of the government’s National Development
Council, and took him and the powerful Director General of Inter-Services Intelligence along on
his first visit to the United States. In return, the COAS agreed for the first time ever to freeze the
military’s budget in recognition of the dire economic problems facing the state. Bajwa also has
met privately with top business leaders three times to identify ways to bolster the struggling
economy and stated that “national security is intimately linked to [the] economy while prosperity
is a function of balance in security needs and economic growth.” Furthermore, he has given
Khan’s government political cover by pointedly warning an opposition political leader not to
attempt to destabilize the government during a period of economic crisis and tension with India,
saying that “Imran Khan is a constitutional Prime Minister and neither I nor you can minus him.”

Skeptics may look at these facts and conclude that the Army has brazenly accumulated additional
power in the economic and political spheres. It is true that the present civil-military relationship
is not a marriage of love, but rather one of convenience based on the Army’s recognition that the
only alternative to working cooperatively with Khan is another period of military rule, which it
has unsuccessfully attempted four times, each leaving the Army discredited and unpopular.
Working with the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan Muslim League failed repeatedly due
to historical animosities, unacceptable levels of corruption, and fundamental disagreement on
relations with India. The religious parties lack domestic support and are too closely tied to
radical anti-state groups. Thus, working with Khan is now the only option for the Army, and has
so far been a rather successful one. In Khan’s first year in power, the Army was pleasantly
surprised by his ability to obtain funding for Pakistan’s cash-starved economy, secure another
IMF tranche, avoid sanctions from the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering, and
partially thaw the frozen relationship with the United States.

Khan and the Army are most united on the issue of Kashmir. Indian Prime Minister Modi’s
decision to revoke Article 370 of the Constitution—and, with it, Jammu and Kashmir’s special
status—unexpectedly internationalized a dormant issue that, for the first time in a very long time,
has put the civilian government and the Army on the same page of the same book concerning
India. Khan and Bajwa’s recent Independence Day statements were remarkably similar. Khan
declared, “this is my message to you (Modi): you take action and every brick will be countered
with a stone….the Army is prepared; not just the Army but the entire nation will fight alongside
our military….we will be ready, we will respond to whatever you do—we will go till the end.”
And the COAS echoed, “there can never be a compromise on Kashmir….we shall stand in the
face of tyranny, regardless of the cost.” Khan also appointed staunch India hardliner Munir
Akram to replace the long serving Maleeha Lodi as Permanent Representative to the United
Nations. And he pointedly stated on 24 October, “I have asked Army Chief General Bajwa to
keep his troops fully prepared for a befitting response to any such misadventure (along the
LoC),” noting his government’s trusting relationship with the military.

The future of Pakistan’s Kashmir policies will likely feature a hand-in-glove arrangement in
which Khan will be Pakistan’s public face in messaging and diplomacy, which has so far yielded
little more than support from China, Turkey, and Malaysia, with most countries accepting India’s
action as a fait accompli. However, international concerns over Indian human rights violations in
the Kashmir Valley are likely to grow over time and give Pakistan additional cards to play.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani Army and Air Force are complementing this strategy by improving
military readiness in the expectation of future Indian punitive actions in response to another
terrorist event on Indian soil. Military leaders were caught off guard last February when a
terrorist attack killed forty Indian security force personnel and prompted Indian punitive action
deep into Pakistani territory. Neither the Army nor the Air Force want to be accused of making
the same mistake twice, and both are hard at work on improving ground readiness, radar
coverage of Pakistani airspace, and response times in the event of another Indian strike.

But the issue of Kashmir alone is likely insufficient to continue a positive civil-military
relationship. An unanticipated “black swan” event, like an economic collapse, could someday
trigger another military coup. Pakistan is facing an existential crisis over its economy, and the
military may have finally realized that the true center of gravity of Pakistani national security lies
there, not in military capacity alone.

The Khan government has much to do to keep the Army firmly on its side. Khan must keep
diplomatic pressure on India over Kashmir, improve Pakistan’s difficult relations with the United
States, and, above all, show demonstrable progress in correcting the country’s structural
economic deficiencies, because GHQ will not allow a flat-lined military budget indefinitely.
Until Khan makes real progress in the economic sphere by increasing the tax base, increasing
foreign investment, solving the energy problem, and containing debt servicing costs, the jury is
still very much out on which direction the Pakistani civil-military relationship will ultimately
move.

Democracy and agitation

As ‘Guardian’ put it recently, “for democracy to function, you need a civically informed
electorate and a fourth estate that functions independently of vested interests. Moreover, you
need a genuinely representative electoral system and mechanisms to ensure external, malign
actors are neutered. Unfortunately none of the above are entirely possible. They’re Utopian
ideals. We can work toward them. We can recognize them as goals. We can improve. That’s the
best we can do.”

We Pakistanis are generally realistic about how poorly informed the electorate is on national
issues or how independent the media is but recent events in the country, where leader of a
political party descended on Islamabad, left little doubt that we are in a class of our own.

The leaders of the ‘Azadi March’ made a spectacle of themselves with irresponsible harangues.
They also displayed a lack of concern for political stability in the country just when it is faced
with a host of issues in a rapidly evolving milieu of regional and global politics.

One often hears and reads assertions by our politicians about our unique geographical location or
our superiority in ideology, as if that counted as substitute for performance. Nor is the presence
of an adjective descriptive of Islamic faith in the title of our republic itself a proof of courage and
moral excellence. Identifying, acknowledging and an honest self-appraisal should be the first
steps in rectifying flaws in our democracy instead of misplaced self-praise.

In moments like these, a thought whiffs across about the much quoted saying by Abraham
Lincoln: ‘you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but
you cannot fool all the people all the time’. Perhaps, the people of Pakistan have been fooled into
the mirage of democracy and in doing so successive governments either blamed military
inventions or used the ‘young age’ of our democracy as an excuse for non-deliverance.

In a democracy, a general election is the means to democratic renewal even though this
methodology is increasingly coming under stress in countries ranging from Spain, Venezuela,
Britain (Brexit), to Egypt.

Successive governments in Pakistan have used ‘people’ to advance their own agendas in the
name of democracy, but the people themselves are at a loss to understand where they figure in all
this. For as long as one remembers, our parliament has a restrictive agenda and no time for
effective deliberation. Any government serious about democracy in the country would have
initiated some amendments to the 19th century model of democracy inherited by us from the
West which does not really permit any meaningful engagement between voters and the
representatives, other than an election every few years and an odd referendum thrown in, as was
done by General Pervez Musharraf.

In such a system, only a tiny proportion of the population has a legitimate voice in matters of
direct concern to them between successive elections. To make matters worse, rather than
encouraging informed and nuanced politics, frequent sit-in politics, as witnessed on various
occasions in the last decade, have made our democratic system more adversarial. To be fair to
proponents of agitation politics, when an unresponsive electoral system fails to give voters what
they need direly, disillusionment and cynicism begins to set in. Political protests are the
constitutional right of every party but a lively, thriving democracy can only emerge if there is a
reasonable equilibrium between ‘representative’ and ‘participatory’ democracy.

While we are still honeymooning with democracy, elsewhere in the world the perception about
this form of governance is slowly but surely undergoing a change. According to Freedom House,
an independent watchdog, democracy is in retreat worldwide as tyranny and authoritative
regimes ban opposition groups and jail their leaders.

A crisis of confidence in Western democracies in the wake of allegations of Russian influence

over the last elections in the US has deepened, with many citizens in an increasing number of
countries expressing doubts if democracy serves their interest. Internet and social media tools
have become instruments in holding elections – whether free and fair is another debate.

This is discouraging for Pakistan’s democratic experience where people are at the very least
losing appetite for parliamentary democracy. In that sense Prime Minister Imran Khan’s
government has done well not to stifle recent protests in Islamabad.

Developed democracies are now tinkering with the idea of ‘deliberative’ democracy where, in
contrast to representative democracy, citizens are taken on board to solve their problems. In
practical terms, it boils down to creating forums where citizens listen to each other respectfully,
seek to understand each other’s views, change their hard-wired views when necessary and create
a much desired rich and informed democratic culture so dismally lacking in most democracies.
Significant progress has been witnessed with this model at local governments’ level in Brazil and
Iceland.

This form offers prospects of preventing resources being siphoned off by corrupt politicians as a
matter of right and spent where it is most needed in areas like improving sanitation, garbage
collection and treatment, clean drinking water, green spaces, health and education and
transforming the lives of the poor in a substantial way. If Prime Minister Imran Khan wants to
reform our existing unresponsive democratic system, he would do well to give a thought to
deliberative democracy next time he decides to take a couple off days for a quiet weekend in
Banigala.

French philosopher Michel Foucault said that every exercise of power comes with a cost to the
parties exercising that power. Likewise, every dishonest, unethical or cowardly compromise with
power also has a cost. Every such act generates a bill that both the compromisers and those who
have extracted that compromise will have to pay sooner or later. In Pakistan, sadly, it would be
the people who will eventually pay the price of such exercise of power.