Aborting democracy
WE have failed to democratise since 1947 thanks mainly to the security establishment as well as all major political parties. True, we are no North Korea — small buds of democracy do sometimes bloom in a desert of autocracy. But a closer look reveals an odd fact: they have bloomed mainly due to the PPP and PML-N. Both have done much harm to, but also more good for, democracy than other big parties.
Politics emerges societal realities. Ours is a patronage-driven politics, with clans and tribes running social, economic and political processes. There is no escaping societal realities till they change slowly. The corrupt, dynastic politics of the PPP and PML-N emerges from this reality. More oddly, non-dynastic parties — BJP, JVP (Sri Lanka), MQM, TLP, Jamaat-i-Islami and PTI — are worse on violence, bigotry and populism indicators. Even dynasties within them are replaced with cronyism, not merit.
The PTI possesses the sleaze of the PPP and PML-N, plus cultist hero worship that aims to replace laws and institutions with Khan’s fiat; the social extremism and xenophobia (towards the West) of religious parties; TLP- and MQM-type violence; and one-party autocracy goals. Besides it has spread falsehoods via social media as a strategy to silence the truth. So, Khan is a danger both as a ruler and opposition leader. But the party should have been nixed politically.
Unlike the 1990s, the PPP and PML-N deepened democracy in key areas from 2008 to 2018: devolution (18th Amendment), smooth transfer of power (electoral reforms and the 2013 elections), Fata reforms, etc. These gains came to naught when the establishment allegedly rigged the 2018 polls for the PTI. The justifiable no-trust move against the then prime minister in 2022 raised hope that the PDM alliance would relaunch its 2008-2018 agenda. Instead, they have adopted the PTI’s autocratic ways, imperilled free polls and put the establishment back into a pole position.
If the PPP and PML-N adopt PTI’s ways, we’ll get two new PTIs.
The Punjab polls mess is a reflection of the controversial verdicts of the Supreme Court and the Election Commission on Article 63-A of the Constitution and the de-seating of 25 PTI dissidents. But there is no excuse for the KP polls and abuses against the pro-PTI media. May 9’s horrific but limited street violence has been used as an excuse to reverse-engineer and nix the PTI. Most of those involved deserve fines, community service or home lockups, as done after a mob attacked the US Capitol, which is considered more sacrosanct than the palatial home of a commander.
Only those carrying out arson and serious assaults deserve jail. Trying them in non-civilian courts for inciting mutiny has been criticised. Mutiny is open rebellion against an authority. The Potemkin Mutiny during the Russo-Japanese War was over bad food. The 700-strong crew killed nearly half the ship’s officers. In Germany’s Kiel mutiny in 1919, thousands of sailors occupied ships and seized control of the city. On May 9, we only had brief aimless mayhem by largely unarmed mobs led astray by fake rhetoric. It soon dispersed.
One can’t speak of the death of democracy as it is as yet unborn in Pakistan let alone grown to adulthood. We had a foetus in a womb parented by the PPP and PML-N who have aborted even that. When these two parties can crush the tiny seeds their hands had planted, one loses hope for democracy in Pakistan. If both adopt the PTI’s autocratic ways, they we will get two new PTIs. One can only say sadly: “Et tu, Brute?” Will we have another tryst with democracy any time soon?
These events reflect the weak basis of the PTI, engineered by the establishment around Khan’s empty populism. The PPP survived six much longer crackdowns: 1968-1969, 1977-1988, 1990-1993, 1997-1999 and 1999-2008; the PML-N three (1993-1996, 1999-2008 and 2018-2022). But the PTI collapsed a few weeks after facing its first crackdown, even if it was the most intense one by a civilian set-up in recent years. Khan cuts a lonely figure today in Zaman Park, like Bahadur Shah in Delhi Fort.
The PPP and PML-N emerged from the societal realities of the poor and the traders whose lives depend heavily on politics. These groups join the PPP-PML-N patronage networks that sap their ire. The PTI emerged from the vacuous rage of the upper middle class for whom politics is a social media pastime. Their elite lives are less affected by misrule as they use private fixes for public problems like crime and power cuts, instead of joining political struggles to fix them. Their ire thus sapped, neither class joins political struggles. We must go beyond such patronage and social media political fixes. The way forward is a progressive leftist political struggle to birth a better democracy.
The writer is a political economist with a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Twitter: @NiazMurtaza2
Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2023