A Rhyme For Fools -- 1

The election of 2007 presents Pakistan with a unique opportunity to amend its future with a brighter hope and a possibility to learn from its past mistakes. The elections of 2007 will not necessarily bring a rule of democracy in Pakistan and they will not be the beginning of the end of the military interventions in Pakistani politics. The importance of the 2007 elections, in the evolution of Pakistani politics towards a pluralistic polity, resides in its symbolic value and what they herald for Pakistan in the long term. The greatest significance of the elections in 2007 will be acknowledgement, if not the acceptance, of the idea in the imagination of all the Pakistanis; politicians and the civilians and the military, that elections must be held on a regular basis and that governments, in power, must be changed via an electoral mechanism and not through extra-constitutional means.

The question is not to debate how to attain democracy but how to sustain the process of democracy in Pakistani politics. The problem in Pakistani politics is not a lack of an agreement on democracy as the best form of governance, but rather the issue of contention is, and has been, the failure to decide how to institutionalize the process of democracy in Pakistan. There is no substitute to democracy in Pakistani politics and neither will any form of government, which is not democratic in nature, succeed in Pakistan given the nation’s political, linguistic, cultural, ethnic and religious heterogeneity. Pakistan, as a nation has historically displayed more points of divergence than it has exhibited a sense of purpose in its national politics and this is a reflection of the myriad ideals, which exist in Pakistan. The non-homogenous nature of Pakistan, as it presently exists, demands that the many voices of plurality which exist within Pakistan have to be accommodated and given a share in the national debate.

The national debate, which will eventually settle the outstanding issues facing Pakistan and its population, can only be held within an inclusive political environment and not on the basis of the politics of exclusion. In this sense, democracy offers itself as the best expression of facilitating an exchange of ideas in Pakistan and as the only form of governance in Pakistan, which seems capable of sculpting a national consensus in Pakistani politics. The historic and the political failure of Pakistan has been been a lack of democracy in its politics due to its own tragic choice to discard a democratic tradition and its own sense of a political insecurity, as a nation, which led it to believe that there could be a substitute; an alternative form of governance to the process of democracy itself.

In this sense, the continuing failure of democracy establishing political roots in Pakistan has been the collective national failure of the Pakistanis in appeasing the politics of blame, which dominates the Pakistani political landscape and obscures the pressing issues of the day. This sense of a political confusion can be easily discerned in the contemporary political debate in Pakistan, which is fixated on the need to blame the failure of democracy on a particular cause or a reason. The end result of this is that Pakistani politics are caught up in an endless cycle of recriminations and accusations with no hope of offering a solution to the problems being faced by Pakistan.

It is a futile question asking whether Pakistan is suited for democracy or whether democracy can flourish in Pakistan. It is highly unfortunate that the debate in Pakistan is still parrying the questions of identifying a scapegoat for Pakistan’s lack of democracy. The insight into this debate is that the cause of democracy in Pakistan will not be advanced by deciding, who is to be blamed for its derailment in Pakistani politics, but seeking to frame the questions, whose answers will eventually strengthen the process of democracy itself in Pakistan. One of the oldest truisms in politics suggests that the ability to succeed in politics does not exist in providing the right answers, but in asking the right questions, in order to solve a problem. This applies equally well to democracy in Pakistan, because as a form of governance democracy is an evolutionary process towards a right choice and it is not the idealization of the perfect choice in politics, as it is wrongly assumed in Pakistan.

The Pakistani political participants, and this includes both the civilians and the military, need to understand that democracy is the process of political evolution and not the perfection of the political process itself. In Pakistani politics, there exists a misplaced perception that democracy is an end in itself and the attainment of democracy will be marked by the culmination of the civilian power over the political authority of the military. Furthermore, in Pakistani politics, the idea of democracy is closely identified with and influenced by political personalities, both military and civilian. In this sense, Pakistani political debate on the nature of democracy does not necessarily argue the values of democracy, as an idea, as much as it seeks to validate the notion of a personalized form of democracy. Therefore, the nature of democracy in Pakistan has been understood and has been appreciated not as a process of politics, but as the tenor of politics predicated on the idea of a personality cult, which has been responsible for undermining the usefulness of institutionalized politics in Pakistan.

Compounding this problem is another issue, which has also contributed to towards hindering the growth of an institutionalized form of democracy in Pakistan. The politicians of Pakistan, both in and out of the uniform, have traditionally favored personalized politics, which places importance on the idea of ad hocism and discourages the role and importance of well established institutions in Pakistani politics. The reason behind this is that all the politicians in Pakistan, regardless of their choice of attire, wish to avoid accountability for their actions and thus, have been responsible for undermining political or any institutionalized accountability, which might have had the potential to limit their transgressions. Due to this reason, Pakistani politics tends to be a political contest of personal grudges and even more crucially, because of this Pakistani politics are, and historically have been, issue specific to the politics of personal animosities.

Consequently, the only way to ensure the continued existence and evolution of democracy in Pakistan is to create the political, administrative, educational and social institutions, which will have the capacity and an ability to nourish and protect the democratic process from the contemporary vicissitudes of Pakistani politics. Political institutions help in the process of democracy by their ability to sustain a democratic process of politics and they do so by offering the paradigms of a political discourse within which a political debate can take place. The creation of political institutions, in Pakistan, which are free from political coercion and duress are desperately needed, because one of issues retarding the sustainability of democracy in Pakistan is the issue of political legitimacy. The reality of Pakistani politics is that it is more noted for its lack of a systematic transparency and by its endemic corruption and has been marked by so much political malfeasance that there is absolutely no political trust left in Pakistani politics.

Pakistan needs to re-create a level of political trust, between all its political participants, in order to develop an ambiance of political cooperation and to move the general disposition of its politics, away from the issues of confrontation, to the issues of reconciliation and cooperation based on the ideas of political compromises. Pakistani politics has to learn the art of political tolerance, which gives respect to all political opinions and not just one particular opinion and it needs to articulate a sense of confidence, which does not feel insecure in the company of dissenting opinions. No matter how piously the Pakistanis may wish for democracy, all democratic endeavors would be still born in Pakistan if there is no legitimacy of politics in Pakistan. Political legitimacy must be instilled into Pakistani politics, because democracy and democratic governance can only take place and exist within an environment, where there is a respect for the political discourse.

Political legitimacy, in the context of Pakistani politics, does not automatically implies the removal of military rule and its replacement by a civilian rule, but rather the acceptance of the idea, which favors a tolerance of dissent and the respect for consensus in the nation’s political life. Such a political legitimacy would help in the creation of a writ of state, because as the situation exists presently in Pakistan, there is no writ of the state that is either applicable or acknowledged as the de jure writ in Pakistani politics. The writ of the state has been generally based, and girded by the popular will of the people and in the absence of a popular representative concordat, the legitimacy of the government can be sustained by through the political occurrence of a legislative process.

The reason, why there is no popular writ of sovereign power in Pakistani politics and why Pakistani politics is identified by its systematic abuse of power is because Pakistani politics favors the idea of transformationism in the implementation of its political ideas. Transformationism, as a political thought, suggests the absence of a political philosophy and the lack of any guiding principles in the pursuit and the exercise of political power. Pakistani political transformationism is based on the politically egocentric idea of retaining power at all costs by any possible means. Political transformationism, as it is practiced in Pakistan, implies that politics in Pakistan have a chameleon like nature and changes its philosophical hues in response to different political realities and the inevitability of this political practice; of following inconsistent policies geared towards the self-preservation of political interests, significantly explains the existence of hypocrisy as the most enduring crystallization of Pakistani politics.

The dichotomy between political flexibility and political transformationism is subtle and highly instructive. Political flexibility advocates the attainment of political goals through acts of compromise and suggests that though the political goal or political philosophy remains constant, the means to achieve them may vary accordingly and may change over a period of time. Political transformationism, on the other hand, suggests a complete lack of a political philosophy or a political ideal and substitutes them with an argument that supports the politics of popular opportunism. Politics of opportunity, as they have been historically fashionable in Pakistan, creates a situation, where corrupt, inefficient and self-contradictory policies dominate the political discourse, but in a more critical sense, they create a brand of politics which exists in a state of vacuum totally apathetic to, and alienated from, reality.

Consequently, a detached review of Pakistani politics would suggest that the first step towards the revitalization of Pakistani politics into a democratically representative and responsive politics would be to create the necessary enabling infrastructure, which would expedite the universality of political idealism in Pakistani politics. This is not to suggest, the existence of a utopian notion of politics, but to stress the point that political pragmatism, as the ideal in Pakistan’s politics, recommends the existence of an evolutionary style of politics capable of honoring a social contract, between the people of Pakistan and their government that is anchored in the politics of constitutional legitimacy. The social contract of constitutionalism that must exist in Pakistani politics can only be guaranteed and eventually nourished by the concept of political institutionalism, which must replace the politics of transformationism that exists in Pakistani politics.

Hence, the mutually reinforcing and reciprocal nature of Pakistani politics and their environment justifies the rationalization that in order to seek a desired uniformity of intentions partial towards democratic politics, Pakistani politics cannot exist or function without strong political institutions. The urgency of creating political institutions in Pakistan’s politics is a prerequisite for ending the arbitrary nature of politics and to secure the principle of political accountability in Pakistani politics. The creation of political institutions are needed in Pakistan to stop the drift of politics into a convoluted expression of a religious nihilism and an exaggerated sense of secularism, which is progressively replacing the idea of political constitutionalism and liberalism as the legitimate forms of accepted political expression in Pakistan.

The utility of political institutions in Pakistan are required not only to end the abuse and misuse of power, but also to bridge the gap that exists between the extremism of political liberalism and political conservatism. Pakistani society has been so thoroughly brutalized by the politics of opportunism that it is incapable of expressing a coherent reason or a rhyme to articulate its raison d’etré. Therefore, political institutions are required in Pakistan to instill a sense of direction and to define the scope of the political debate by giving it a sense of purpose and reason, because without the limits of any constitutionally and institutionally mandated paradigms, Pakistani politics will continue to exist in a state of Hobbesian uncertainty. Granted that politics, in a charitable sense, are an example of controlled anarchy, this still does not obviate the reality that Pakistani politics, without the guiding influence of political institutions, have entered a realm of diminishing returns and in the process, seem to have burned all the bridges behind them.

In a sense, Pakistani politics are already in a state of philosophical and ideological collapse, because the most visible manifestation of this can be glimpsed by the dysfunctional nature of Pakistani politics, which lacks the introspective ability, to analyze the problems confronting it and resolve them. It would be naïve to suggest the existence of political institutions in Pakistan will stop the process of political disintegration, but given the abysmal performance of traditional Pakistani politics, the value of political institutions would not be to reverse the misfortunes of Pakistan’s politics but to help resist them. Pakistani politics and its future are standing at a fork in the road and before the future direction of the Pakistani politics can be decided, a question needs to be asked as to what is the most benign outlook for Pakistani politics.

The primary and the most important duty for political institutions in Pakistan will be to stabilize the rot in Pakistani politics, which is progressively whittling away its ability to reform itself. The impossibility of the task can be measured by the twin options, which haunt the future of Pakistani politics and are more of a nuanced dilemma than they are options. One option suggests that Pakistani politics have become so mal-adroit in their intentions and ability, that there is no point in reforming Pakistani politics and it would be better to start anew. The second option argues for the creation of strong political, social and civic institutions which will help in ushering in an era of responsive and accountable politics in Pakistan. The most worrisome facet about these options is that the reality of Pakistani politics favors the first option, because Pakistani politics have become so anarchic that it no longer has any logical methodology to it. The idea of reforming Pakistani politics by instituting gradual reforms in it have had such a dubious history of failures and faux-successes that the idea of political experimentation in Pakistan inspires more dread than a sense of hope.

If this prognosis seems grim, an even more unsettling question is whether Pakistan has the ability; the political will and stamina needed to adopt a creatively reformist approach to politics and replace the existing and crumbling edifice of its politics with a better one. The answer is in the negative, because the vast majority of the Pakistani population, across political, economic and social spectrums, is a status quo oriented society, which eschews any idea of altering the existing status quo and instead favors the politics of orthodoxy. This implies that the popular opinion in Pakistan may complain and criticize a prevailing situation, but will not undertake steps to reform it regardless of how dire the situation, but will instead support a policy of inaction and indecisiveness. Hence, the dispiriting reality of the Pakistani politics is that in lieu of a bold policy framework to radically modify or re-create its sense of politics, it will always favor the adoption of a policy of incremental political reforms.

The incrementalism of political reforms strongly argues the need for consistency and patience in implementing such reforms and even more so, it argues for a procedure; of a political rubric, which is capable of improvising a workable solution to any emergent problem. The problem faced by political reforms, which are incremental is that their eventual results are opaque and thus, they are vulnerable to political doubts and impulses of politicians to continually amend them for the sake of seeking gratifying results. The investment in any political reform pays dividends over a long period and this means that once a political reform is introduced, it must be allowed to finish its natural progression towards a conclusion and should not be modified, as is the habit in Pakistan, while it is still maturing. Since the time scales involved in the maturity of political reforms are longer than a tenure of a government and for that matter, the political life of most politicians, it is imperative that political reforms must not be reversed or played with periodically and they have to be respected by all the political actors, who should not change them simply for reasons of political expediency.

This fact, thus, recommends that only political institutions have the longevity and the patience to see a reform to its logical end and more importantly, political institutions are the most preferable means of resisting the political insecurities of continually revising political reforms and thus, making them meaningless. The argument advocating the creation of these institutions is not to make the cry for the supremacy of parliament in Pakistani politics per se, but to suggest that there is a need to create a code of political conduct and ethics in Pakistan, based on the supremacy of the law, to which all political participants in Pakistan will be bound to obey. The supremacy of parliament, as an argument, is meaningless because it still will not bring a sense of democratic governance in Pakistani politics and will only help in putting the rubber stamp of democracy in Pakistan. Just as there is a need to institutionalize politics in Pakistan, there is an urgent need to democratize the workings of Pakistani political parties by implementing a sense of constitutional electoral politics in their own ranks and thus, moving them away from the totalitarian politics of personality cults.

Within this, there is a need to devolve a personalized commitment and understanding of, and for, the democratic principles in the population itself, because democracy can only thrive in Pakistan when all the stakeholders in it share a common appreciation for it and respect it as the embodiment of their own aspirations instead of viewing it as a disembodied slogan. Even though there is an urgency to strengthen the political institutions in Pakistan, like the parliament for example, it still pales into insignificance in comparison to the necessity of an independent institution of education, which is capable of grooming citizens, who posses the skills to understand the issues and problems facing them and make the right choices in resolving them. Political institutionalism in Pakistan is a moot question without an educated citizenry, which is free of ideological or religious biases since a secularly educated population is less prone to bouts of emotionalism. Emotionalism, which colors Pakistani politics, preys on the illiteracy of the Pakistani population to fully understand the issues confronting them and this way, deprives the Pakistani population of a basic political knowledge, which can help it sift through the nuances of a problem.