THE last fortnight has provided us an opportunity to judge how far Pakistan has come in terms of consolidating democracy. In praising the democratic progression since 2008, we seemed to have missed how obviously absent credible rules of political contestation remain here.

Polish-American political scientist Adam Przeworski defines democratic consolidation as a state when democracy is accepted by all as the “only game in town”. In our context, political forces would have to recognise that their battles have to be fought by the formal rules of political contestation set within the civilian democratic sphere. For that to happen, these rules must be well understood, seen as fair, and adhered to.

Nothing of the sort has been on display in Islamabad.

One theory for what the dharna was all about comes out of the old mould: the whole drama was orchestrated by the khakis. Khan (and Qadri) was manipulated by GHQ to cut to size Nawaz Sharif’s ambitions of usurping his rightful foreign policy space from the military. If true, nothing has changed: the military can bolster or challenge governments at will.

The second explanation accords Imran Khan agency: Khan was frustrated with the unresponsive attitude of the government regarding the poll reservations of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI). The long march was a last resort option. The goal was to emulate the success of Nawaz Sharif’s long march for the judges’ restoration.

If he was looking for events to play out identically, he would have realised that Sharif’s success came not because of his rallying power — by all accounts, he had rallied modest numbers — but the military’s decision on how the game should end. Again, not a trait of a consolidated democracy fighting it out strictly within the civilian sphere.

Politicians should be aware that people are disillusioned by the system.

On the other hand, if Khan believed he would have enough public support to bring the government to its knees, it was clear early on that the numbers were nowhere near what could bring a government’s moral legitimacy into question. Yet, Khan continued to up the ante. Most political observers couldn’t understand why he wasn’t leaving himself room for an honourable retreat.

Khan — mind you, many in PTI did not agree with him — to his mind, was in a no-loss situation. As one of his lawmakers told me, he is obsessed with the idea that he simply can’t succeed in a system skewed so heavily in favour of the PML-Ns and PPPs of the world.

Ultimately then, while Khan’s ideal outcome was to force an overhaul of the system without causing it to crash, even a crash followed by forced rebuilding was a more attractive option than mere tinkering with the status quo which is all the government was willing to offer before the march. Hence his constant efforts to raise the stakes — even though he realised that the longer the situation dragged, the greater the chances of some untoward incident leading those in uniform to take some action.

The government was concerned about GHQ signals. Right from when it imposed Article 245, it wanted to be sure the military stood behind it (or at least not behind the protests), even in return for some rumoured quid pro quos in terms of the division of policymaking space. Parse the government’s behaviour and you’ll find a strong correlation between its demeanour on any given day during the dharnas and where it thought GHQ stood on the issue.

The khakis’ power to arbitrate was never in doubt. Neither did they shy away from using it. No single act in this whole saga mattered more than the ISPR statement calling for the situation to be resolved through dialogue. How quickly this forced talks on the warring factions reflects GHQ ability to lord over matters.

Finally, if media is to be used as a benchmark for the thinking among our opinion-makers, we seem split on the value of democratic continuity within the current framework. That many talking heads seemed convinced of the merits of the ‘system capture’ argument being presented by PTI and Pakistan Awami Tehreek is not surprising; more worrisome was the sense that the constitutional efforts at improving the rules of the game undertaken since 2008 have not cut it — and won’t because those in charge of bringing in changes have vested interests in the status quo.

This is something civilian and military custodians of the system need to think about: people are disillusioned by the system’s ability to deliver. And till this remains, you’ll always have questions about the value of its continuity from one quarter or another.

Optimists like me need to revisit just what the last six years may have meant for our democratic consolidation. We are nowhere near Przeworski’s benchmark.

The writer is a foreign policy expert based in Washington, DC.

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2014