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The beauty of democracy

The beauty of democracy

Author: Ayaz Amir
Publication: The Asian Age
Date: May 17, 2004

Introduction: When India votes, does Pakistan realise what it's missing?

India goes to the polls and the world notices. Pakistan plunges into another exercise in authoritarian management and the world notices but through jaundiced eyes. Are we so dumb that the comparison escapes us?

Riding the slogan "India is Shining", and convinced that favourable winds were blowing his way, Atal Behari Vajpayee called elections five months before time. After tendering his resignation he will have all the time in the world to figure out how he got it so wrong.

Pundits will also have enough time to wipe egg from their faces. No one had predicted this outcome. Such is the beauty and vibrancy of democracy, especially subcontinental democracy.

Both of our countries began from the same point and with the same trappings. Yet what a distance separates us now. Indian democracy is an established thing while we are still at the stage of defining what kind of democracy suits us.

In India, if Pakistanis haven't noticed, the chief election commissioner is the chief election commissioner. Apart from his mistress, if he has one, no one dare meddle in his affairs. In Pakistan the election commission gyrates to orders from above. Do I divulge a state secret? Everyone here knows this to be true.

When will we wake up? When will we learn? When will it dawn on us that it is not India's size, population, tourism or IT industry making us look small but Indian democracy? Figure this out how you will, this is how the chips fall.

India was seized with election fever. For days on end the entire machinery of government here was obsessed with the coming of one individual, the PML-N's Shahbaz Sharif. It took something resembling a military operation to deport him. Do we need enemies to make us look bad? We do the same job far better ourselves.

It's not a question of personality. As far as rulers of his type go, Pervez Musharraf is an easygoing and relatively open person, able to take a lot of criticism. But what should the nation do with these qualities when he presides over a political system threatening to put Pakistan to sleep?

Pakistan's current problems are rooted in the collective genius of the military and its reluctance to conduct an orderly withdrawal from the political arena. In fact, we are witnessing something new, not so much the military dominating other institutions as the line between the military and civilian spheres blurring altogether.

Other countries have gone through a similar process: the Philippines under Marcos, Indonesia under Suharto. Long after Indonesia discarded Suhartoization Pakistan is moving in that direction.

Pakistan is not in turmoil. Which is a pity because turmoil is creative, giving birth to new things. Pakistan is afflicted with just the opposite: lack of ferment and too much docility.

Is anything happening here? There's no movement, no sense of direction, no understanding about where Pakistan should go. In four and a half years the present order's most notable achievement is a string of unconvincing statistics. We are at the take-off stage, we are told. Considering how long this stage is proving, we seem stuck on a pretty long runway.

As opposed to any vision, all we have is a set of desires. The regime wants to be impregnable and in power forever. That's about it. Beyond this elemental desire, nothing.

The generalissimo wants to keep wearing his uniform although he knows he's promised to take it off. He's unhappy with the prime minister and would gladly see the last of him but has no idea who to replace him with.

The presidential camp wants nothing to do with the PML-N or the PPP, the two parties topping its list of enemies to be thwarted and destroyed. It's also unhappy with the clerics of the MMA. You would think it would be happy with its own creation, the Q League - the king's party - but it is not.

Now under official auspices, which in Pakistan means the intelligence agencies, the various governmental Leagues, a collection of big and small zeros, have been brought together to constitute a unified League, in effect a bigger zero. What miracles this phenomenal zero performs remain unclear.

What these conflicting desires have produced is a unique creature neither animal nor bird. A dispensation half-military, half-democratic, half-presidential, half-parliamentary, which, when it cannot walk or fly, elicits the muttered remark, "...damned politicians".

What have politicians got to do with this mess? The most you can blame them for is acquiescence. Whenever a military strongman puts the Constitution in an icebox (the fourth time it's happened in not too long a history) and blows his whistle, there is no shortage of politicians, led invariably by figures from Punjab, in a mad scramble to take service under military rule.

But politicians aren't the only collaborators. Don't judge them too harshly. According to the unvarying script of military rule, the first collaborators are those who legitimize it, including lawyers and journalists.

Politicians come afterwards when military rule matures to the point of wanting a political facade. Resurrect Maharaja Ranjit Singh from his samadhi and these classes of professionals will collaborate with him too.

Remarkable, is it not, that Pakistani dictators have never lacked the best legal advice? Bar councils may agitate as much as they like but the fact remains that from Field Marshal Ayub Khan to General Musharraf, some of the very best lawyers have served Pakistani dictators. And to think that some of the titans of the Indian freedom struggle - the elder Nehru, Gandhi, Jinnah - were lawyers. Times change. The chain of collaboration, however, doesn't just go down. It also reaches up.

If lawyers, journalists and politicians (by which, of course, is meant "some") collaborate with the military, the military has always seen its deliverance in collaborating with the United States.

Lower and upper collaboration - collaboration second class and collaboration first class - are regular themes in Pakistan's history. It's no different this time. The military expects and gets docility from the people of Pakistan. It shows an extreme form of docility to the US, all in the name of the national interest.

Some of the outward marks of this skewed relationship are scarcely flattering. Since Sep 11 it has become standard practice for an assistant secretary of state, Christina Rocca, to visit Islamabad at regular intervals and in one go meet everyone who matters: president, prime minister, foreign minister, - quite a power trip for a middle-ranking official of the State Department. I suppose we like it this way.

But this is turning out to be an interesting year. In India we have seen an upset and unless the American people are dumber than anyone thinks, Bush's re-election chances look dimmer by the day, not because John Kerry is setting the electorate on fire but because Iraq is playing out so badly.

This is no time for any Marcos or Suharto. We must move with the times and not keep slipping back. We aren't a banana republic or at least weren't when we started out as an independent country.

We deserve better. We have the talent and promise to do better. Democracy is the foundation of our nationhood, Pakistan being born by an Act of the British Parliament, and to nullify democracy means to question the very basis of Pakistan.

I suspect the great drama of democracy next door leaves many Pakistanis (let me not presume to speak on behalf of all) with a sense of sadness because it's a reminder of what their country is missing out on and where it has gone wrong.

But no reason to be downcast or give up hope. The bad times are not irreversible. We can still pick up the pieces. But on one condition: only if the army does its own thing and leaves government and politics alone.

By arrangement with Dawn
 


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