When the Will of the People Poses an 'Inconvenient' Truth

“The election results in Pakistan were good news, about the best that could have emerged, but what kind of democracy is it that puts the fate of the country in the hands of a Nawaz Sharif and an Asif Zardari? My lord! How weird! Help me understand...," beseeched an American journalist who has lived and worked in Pakistan, in a recent email to some journalist friends.

My spontaneous response: “It’s surely not worse than a democracy which puts the fate of America -- and the world -- in the hands of a George W. Bush...TWICE!!”

I didn’t mean to be rude or flippant. I don’t like George W. Bush (because of his foreign policy) any more than my friend likes Mr Zardari or Mr Sharif, although he thinks that the overall election results were about the best that there could have been. However, we agree that democracy is an ongoing process and that it is the right of the people to bring in whom they choose.

Several lobbies in Pakistan mirror my American friend’s reaction and are suspicious of both Mr Sharif and Mr Zardari because of their past reputations and records. Both leaders, with the mature and responsible positions they are taking, have so far justified the confidence reposed in them by the electorate.

Democracy can be inconvenient when you don’t like the leadership it throws up. It can be deeply damaging when it brings in leadership whose stint in power leads to negative, far-reaching and long term consequences—like President Bush, who is responsible for the loss of hundreds of thousands of human lives, American, Iraqi and Afghan. And, by extension, Pakistani, when the Pakistan army under US pressure attacks its own people in a bid to win the ‘war on terror’. (The Pakistan government can take sole credit for the military action in Balochistan).

Certainly governments need to deal firmly with violence enacted by militants of any hue. However, history teaches us that a heavy-handed military-only approach leads to more violence, hatred, and militancy.

It’s not just Mr Bush. The democratically elected right wing BJP government in India backed by religious militants caused enormous damage to India’s secular polity. Human rights groups hold the BJP responsible for the Gujarat massacre that was made possible by the party’s patronage to right-wing extremists. This, despite the relatively soft face it presented through prime minister A.B. Vajpayee, the poet-politician who had the grace to visit the Minar-e-Pakistan when he came to Lahore in February 1999 at the invitation of then prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

Mr Sharif too, was an elected leader despite the flawed electoral process and irregularities that brought him to power. He acted in the most undemocratic way when in power, muzzling the media and trying to pass ‘religious’ laws that would give him absolute power.

The Pakistani people were not given the satisfaction of showing him the door; in October 1999, the military snatched that prerogative as it has done so many times before.

In America, Mr Bush was able to play upon the fears and nationalist reactions in a post 9/11 world to get voted in for a second term. In India, the people exercised their right to boot out the right-wing forces that they had elected in the previous polls.

When the Palestinians made the ‘mistake’ of voting for Hamas in January 2006, the US and Israel immediately began “discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again,” reported The New York Times (February 14, 2006). The intention, according to the report, was “to starve the Palestinian Authority of money and international connections to the point where, some months from now, its president, Mahmoud Abbas, is compelled to call a new election. The hope is that Palestinians will be so unhappy with life under Hamas that they will return to office a reformed and chastened Fatah movement.”

Backed by Western powers, the Algerian army cracked down on the winning Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and postponed subsequent elections after the FIS bagged over half the votes cast in municipal elections of June 1990 and was leading in the first stage of national legislative elections of December 1991.

The result in both cases was increasing militancy in the area, instead of less.

In a previous era, of course, such crackdowns were geared not against ‘Islamic militancy’ but against anything that smacked of communism, socialism or anything ‘left-wing’.
The people of Iran, and indeed the world, well remember the role of the Western powers after the Iranians elected the socialist leaning Mossadeq as prime minister who promptly nationalized the nation’s oil resources.

The list is long. At this point in time, we in Pakistan are concerned with the transition to democracy that genuinely reflects the will of the people.

The buzz from above reflects other priorities. The people, by rejecting the Musharraf-backed parties, have clearly indicated that they do not want him in power. But Western powers dismiss this verdict because they find it convenient to deal with him. They fear that his removal would lead to ‘instability’. And so they will continue to prop him up.
Secondly, there is talk of the general dislike in Washington’s corridors of power for Nawaz Sharif: Mr Bush, even as his second term ends (plenty of time to do more damage yet), is not happy at the idea of an alliance of the PPP and the PML-N. We hear of pressure being exerted on the PPP to ally not with Nawaz Sharif but with the disgraced and discredited PML-Q.

It would be unrealistic to expect all these pressures to be magically lifted just because the people of Pakistan have willed it so. The electorate, which in no uncertain terms rejected the ‘religious’ and the Musharraf-backed parties at the polls, can only hope that their support is enough for Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari to stay strong and hold the interests of the people above all else.