Hegemony of the Ruling Elite in Pakistan

On October 12, 1999, an eleven years democratic rule came to an abrupt end when army seized power and dismissed the government of Nawaz Sharif who tried to sack the Army Chief of Staff, General Musharraf. It was the fourth time since 1958, that the army had seized power in Pakistan's 52 years turbulent history.

We have a chequered past in our experiments with democracy. The first major blow to the system came in October 1951 with the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan followed by the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly by Governor General, Ghulam Mohammad in October 1954. This action was supported by the Chief Justice Munir of Pakistan's Chief Court (as the Supreme Court used to be called at that time) that paved the way for autocratic rule.

In October 1958, General Ayub Khan extinguished a limping democracy, imposed martial and also abrogated the constitution. The Chief Justice Munir of Supreme Court again sanctioned his action by declaring it a revolution. General Ayub Khan introduced his own constitution in 1962 based on the notion of controlled democracy known as the "Basic Democracy." However, he violated his own constitution when he handed over power to his army chief, General Yahyah Khan, amid mounting demonstrations against his government in October 1969.

General Yahyah Khan imposed martial law and introduced his own "Legal Framework Order" under which fair elections were held in March 1970 for the first time in Pakistan's history. However, the results were acceptable to the feudal lords and bureaucracy in West Pakistan who feared a perpetual domination of the Bengalis from East Pakistan. General Yahyah Khan launched a military operation in East Pakistan that led to the dismemberment of Pakistan and creation of Bangladesh in December 1971. On December 20, 1971, Yahyah Khan handed over power to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto whose PPP had won most of the seats in the March 1970 elections in West Pakistan. Bhutto had the honour to become the Martial Law administrator. He got unanimous approval of the constitution by the national Assembly in 1973 but started to distort it soon after its enforcement. By the time Bhutto was ousted by General Zia in July 1977, he had incorporated seven amendments to the constitution.

General Zia put the constitution in abeyance. Once again the country's Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Anwarul Haq unanimously validated the imposition of martial law, under the doctrine of necessity. General Zia revived it in December 1985 only after rewriting it according to his own whims. He refused to lift martial law unless his constitutional amendments, known as the 8th amendments were approved by a parliament elected on non-party basis in February 1985.

Hence there will be no exaggeration to say that the military, the judiciary and the politicians all took turns from the very beginning to suppress democracy and pummel whatever constitution there was.

In May 1988, General Zia dismissed his handpicked Prime Minister, Mohammad Khan Junejo, who was insisting on an independent inquiry into the Ojri camp explosions. President General Zia remained Commander in Chief of the Army till his death in a mysterious aircrash. His death gave way to the restoration of democracy and general elections were held in November 1988 that returned Benazir Bhutto's PPP as a major political party but without any overall majority in the parliament. Since 1988, four general elections, four elected and four interim governments could not bring any political stability in the country.

DECADE OF DEMOCRACY (1988-1999)

Pakistan's history of the last 11 years (1988-1999), indicates that Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto both proved the spoilers of its democracy and the betrayers of its people. They dominated the national politics all through the 11 years that saw democracy in the country turning into a farce and the nation into a basket case.
Mutual accommodation, understanding and consensus, the essential hallmarks of a democratic order, meant nothing to them. Intolerance of dissent, abhorrence of criticism and hounding of opponents were their political creed. Self-interest, self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment were their moving passions. Both professed to be sworn democrats but in practice both were proven despots.

The governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, who successively came to power after Zia-ul-Haq's death blatantly attempted to concentrate all powers in their hands creating a sense of alienation in the smaller provinces and despondency among the people. Indeed, if there is a single factor which has impaired the working of democracy in Pakistan, it was the persistent ambition of the 'elected' rulers to centralize all powers, including economic and development planning, and deny the provinces - the federating units - even the right to exercise the powers which undisputedly should be theirs under the Constitution. The increasing concentrating of powers in the federal list under the 1973 Constitution has reduced the provinces almost to nonentities, whereas the centre now enjoys powers to legislate in as many as 114 subjects.

The former US national security advisor, Robert C. McFarlane Pakistani has rightly remarked that the democratic system is comprised of "a few families struggling with one another to achieve absolute power and are inevitably, in Lord Acton's phrase, corrupted absolutely."

ASABIYA - THE RULING ELITE

There is some truth in the observed of Roy Olivier, author of the Failure of Political Islam, that the politics in several Islamic countries cannot be explained without reference to the concept of the asabiya, to segmentation and esprit de corps (privileged), which is to say, the establishment of clientele networks more concerned with their own prosperity than with that of the state.

Asabiya, literally means blood relationship or consanguinity, comes from the root Arabic word 'asb' which means the nerve or the command center of something. Asabiya, in the Khaldunian sense, refers not only to those primordial feelings which are embedded in the natural ties of kinship and blood relations, but also to those primordial feelings which are embedded in the natural ties of kinship and blood relations, but also to the broader context of group cohesion, affiliation and common concerns. Ibn Khaldun coined the term to express the corporate will of a group. Asabiya is seen as a collective force giving staying and striking power to a group animated by loyalty, a common outlook, or ideal, based on physical or spiritual kinship. It enables that group, and especially its leader, to realize their united will in political action and specially to found and to maintain the state.

In modern era, the structures of the traditional asabiya were dismantled by urbanization, by the shuffling of society, by idealization and they rebuilt themselves along different lines such as political patronage and economic mafias. The modern asabiya are recompositions of the esprit de corps based on the fact of the state and the globalization of economic and financial networks; they are translations of a traditional relationship of solidarity into the modern realm. The modern asabiya are not merely the permanence of tribalism or religious communalism; they may be reconstituted on the basis of modern sociological elements (the new intelligentsia versus the old families), but they function as predators and perpetuate themselves through matrimonial alliances. Their space is no longer the grandfather's village but the modern city and political parties may function as patronage networks around important notables.

In Syria and Iraq, power is held by asabiya, solidarity groups founded on ethnicity, clan and family. In Algeria, the ruling elite, or asabiya, annulled the 1992 general elections when they saw the Islamic Salvation Front coming into power through the polls. In Pakistan, both the Muslim League and the Pakistan People's Party are arms of large families with industrial and land holdings.

DEMOCRACY PAKISTAN STYLE

In short, our romance with democracy has only given birth to despots like Nawaz Sharif, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto.Yet without a long term and genuinely functioning democracy optimizing the Pakistani potential at home and abroad is not possible. Neither is Pakistan capable of earning the respect its people deserved unless the region and the world sees it as a healthy and functioning democracy. For all its problems democracy still remains the best governing system.

However, any future elections on the basis of current census and prevalent social and economic set up will not bring any relief to the masses as our 11 years democratic experiments has proved. A massive surgical operation of our social set up is required, particularly extensive land reforms are inevitable to break the stranglehold of feudal lords over the politics of the country.

It is indeed ironical that when naked martial law was imposed by Generals Zia in July 1977, Yahyah Khan in March 1969, and Ayub Khan in October 1958 and the constitutions in force at the time were abrogated (in two cases), elected assemblies dissolved, and courts suspended, the US and Britain not only promptly recognized the emerging military governments without any qualms but also doled out funds to them.

But this time when the army stopped short of proclaiming martial law and the Constitution only held in abeyance and the courts allowed to function normally so long as they did not pronounce on the legality of the orders of the Chief Executive and his representatives, an orchestrated campaign was launched by western powers for the restoration of civilian rule in the shortest possible time.

However, times are gone when the common man in the Third World did not understand the motives and designs of the neo-colonial powers. The purpose is to keep a stranglehold on former colonies by weakening them economically and politically so that they remain subdued and economically dependent upon the West and its allies.

Those who describe Mr. Sharif's ouster from power as a deviation from democracy must remember that he set the stage for doing away with democracy. His disregard for democratic institutions became obvious when he ordered his party members to storm the Supreme Court and prevent the hearing of cases of past corruption against him.

At the end I will say that Pakistan's disarray does not of course flow from any inherent flaw. Much the same would happen in any other society with similar flexibility of attitude towards established norms and agreed frameworks. The army has taken the job of rescuing the country from its current economic chaos and social upheaval. However, if history has any instruction, no army, now matter it may be, has ever rescued a country from internal disaster or been able to prevent its disintegration. The Red Army, with all its might, was unable to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union.