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.

In this sense, the role of education and the need for education to be treated as an indispensable pillar of Pakistani political façade cannot be emphasized enough. An independent educational institution in Pakistan, which can produce citizens capable of reasoning a rationalization, but not mistaking a rationalization for a reason, is more important than an independent judiciary or for that matter, an independent election commission. The political independence of a judiciary or an election commission is not a fail-safe guarantee for the continuation of democracy, because as much as democracy relies on the existence of such institutions; democracy can only be safe guarded by an educated population skilled in the arts of analytical logic, which is the only and the best defense against the abuses of political power. In many ways, political institutions are the reflections of the societies, which created them and in case of Pakistan for example, political institutions created by an uneducated population will be more harmful and dangerous to the idea of democracy than they will be beneficial to it. Political institutions, which exist in societies, where there is a high level of illiteracy and where there is a tradition of political instability, tend to be more authoritarian and less democratic.

In a crucial sense, an educated populace is the best means to bring about a democratic revival in Pakistan and in this sense, for democracy to succeed in Pakistan; Pakistan has to invest in another political institution: human resources. A population, which is educated and aware of its rights, can offer a better degree of insularity to political institutions in a country against political trespasses. It is this ability, which naturally generates a high level of resiliency in the political institutions, themselves, to resist corrosive political interventions in their institutional workings. Furthermore, a nation with a highly educated human resource pool, which exhibits the skills of political analysis and synthesis and understands the process of democratic politics and abides by it, will support the foundations of a democratic society better by being more qualified to protect the ethos of its political democracy than any political organization or institution.

In the case of Pakistan, an educated human resource, as a political institution, offers a more enduring commitment to democracy, because not only will it strengthen all other institutions, within Pakistan, which support democracy, but it will eventually be the only political institution in Pakistan capable of dealing with another well organized and politically powerful institution in Pakistan – the Pakistani military. It is an evitable conclusion that once the political institutions in Pakistan evolve and mature into self-sustaining mechanisms of democracy, they will create a conflict of interest with the institutional interests of the Pakistani military, which has always shown a willingness to dominate Pakistan politics. Regardless of how powerful and influential the Pakistani military might be and how successful it is in the policies of divide and conquer, it will find it increasingly difficult to defeat the institutional interests of an educated population, which believes in the ideal of democracy and is united in its defense.

Therefore, the institutional unity of an educated populace will help in retarding the Pakistani military’s forays into politics by buttressing the political institutions of democratic governance in Pakistan. The salient point within this argument is that the political unity and the cohesion of Pakistani population, which is educated and capable of understanding its rights, has the potential to translate the academic debate on democracy, into actualizing the supremacy of parliament as the ultimate arbiter of politics, into a political reality in Pakistan. The supremacy of parliament and its greatest contribution in Pakistani politics will not be in offering a counter-foil to the interests of Pakistani military, but in formulating a series of constitutional provisions in Pakistani politics, which gradually helps in limiting and finally removing the influence of the Pakistani military from politics through a series of well defined constitutionally mandated legal precedents.

This is not an academic idea and it can be realized, but it also means that role of the judiciary; the Supreme Court in Pakistan will have to mutate into one, where the judiciary acts as the ultimate guardian of the constitution and practices an activist interpretation of constitutional review. In order to achieve this ideal, the role of the judiciary will have to become independent in Pakistan, but this judicial independence does not necessarily imply that the judiciary will support the democratic interests of the parliament against the political interests of the Pakistani military. What it means is, however, that independence of the judiciary will be limited only to an interpretation of the constitution as articulated by the political rights and interests of the people of Pakistan, as those stipulations might exist in the constitution itself.

The process of a constitutional judicial independence in Pakistan will not bring the much cherished dreams of democracy in Pakistan any closer in the immediate or in the long term, but it will be an eloquent promise of a final clash of constitutional and institutional interests in Pakistani politics. As the Pakistani political institutions mature and develop the confidence of independent thought and action and as such institutions are supported by a population, which is increasingly literate and assertive of its politics rights, it will find itself frequently at odds with the military’s interests in Pakistani politics. The evolutionary process of democracy, as historically validated, suggests that once the civilian political institutions are strong enough, they will challenge the primacy of the military’s institutional interests in Pakistan, which are not so much political as they are corporatist. The Pakistani military’s dominance of Pakistani politics is not based on its ability to control means of political violence; armed force, as much as it is predicated on its absolute autarky of the Pakistani economy.

The reason behind this distinction is that Pakistani military’s institutional interest is to secure its economic interests within the Pakistani society and therefore, to achieve this aim the military has periodically intervened and influenced Pakistani politics. Pakistani military’s political perception of Pakistan is to manage it like a business corporation and the philosophy of political corporatism suggests a confluence of military discipline with the idea of an economic efficiency. In simple terms, political corporatism is the justification for political technocracy as a dominant political idea and political technocracy overtly intones the subordination of political representative institutions to the principles of economic proficiency. The implicit rationalization for favoring a technocratic rule is to breakdown the various facets of an economy into a fragmentized mechanism of command and control, which can manipulate the forces of supply and demand to create a politically desired economic result. In this case, the political interests of the Pakistani military, and why it favors technocratic rule, is to support the perception that it’s rule has always been a boon for the economic growth and to basically present itself as an economically successful alternative to the civilians in managing Pakistan’s economy.

Therefore, the underlying reason for military interventions in Pakistani history can be reasoned as an armed response of the Pakistani military to protect its economic interests from being undermined. This obliquely suggests that Pakistani military is willing to exist, with a civilian political setup, which is willing to place the interests of the civilian economy under the military’s economic institutional interests as long as it does not ask the military to be politically accountable for its economic dominance of the Pakistani society. Consequently, the points of political disagreements between the Pakistani military and the civilian politicians is not on the nature of democracy or political power in Pakistan, but it based on the question as to which of the two power groups in Pakistan; the military or the civilian politicians, has the right to make, influence, guide and implement economic decisions in Pakistan.

Historically, the political evolution of individual rights, which have generally ended up as expressions of democratic rule, have invariably originated in the issues searching for an economic equilibrium between all the political interests within a given polity. The fact that this debate and democratic evolutionary process is occurring in Pakistan is not surprising, but what is surprising is that the scintilla of this process is the Pakistani population itself. Politically based reform movements have traditionally sprung from the middle classes and from the political leadership of an enlightened social aristocracy, with a deeply ingrained ideal of political philanthropy, but in the case of Pakistan, this movement seems to be based on politically and economically disenfranchised segments of the Pakistani population.

The reason is that the vast majority of the Pakistani population looks upon the middle classes in Pakistan as a status quo society, which is more interested in preserving the existing status quo for its own economic, social and political reasons. Likewise, to this vast group of economically and politically and socially marginalized Pakistanis, political parties are a compromised lot, because they also tend to favor a very narrow definition of political and economic policies, whose benefits are not easily accessible by the majority of the Pakistani people. Thus, given the emerging dynamics of the political evolutionary process in Pakistan, it seems that the final visage of an emergent democracy in Pakistan will be based on the ideals of political populism. The final settlement of this debate and the nature of a Pakistani democracy will be balanced on how the question of sharing the economics resources of Pakistan will be eventually answered.

The increasing polarization of the Pakistani society is based, to a large degree, on the inequality of how the economic pie in Pakistan is shared. The military, which controls the Pakistani economy in both a micro and macro sense, does not contribute in any positive sense towards the overall national economic growth. The Pakistani military has been, historically and traditionally, a consumer and not a producer of the Pakistani economic growth and yet, it retains the most preponderant influence and control on the Pakistani economy. The negative reality of this fact is that since the Pakistani military is also a corporatist entity, given to a technocratic control of the economy, its influence and presence in the Pakistani economy has always grown in a commensurate manner with the growth of the economy itself. With the consequent growth and diversity of the Pakistani economy, the military has also diversified its economic interests in Pakistani economy from manufacturing industries to services industry, like banking, and has established its presence in every possible niché of the Pakistani economy.

This growth and monopolization of the military’s influence in the national economy has logically seen the displacement of the civilian manpower in favor of military personnel, who have become the most visible technocratic mangers of Pakistani economy. It is at this conjunction, that the possibility exists of a future clash of interests between the Pakistani military and the Pakistani citizens. The imbalanced reality of this political-economic situation has grown so acute in Pakistan, that the vast majority of the Pakistani population, which contributes in a positive way towards the national economy, has become resentful and has started to make the unprecedented demand that that Pakistani military justify its political and economic influence in Pakistan. The final justification of this demand is manifesting itself in the sense that as the military’s influence increases, the calls for its political and economic accountability are being vocalized with a renewed vigor.

Ironically, it is a sign of the military’s weakened position in Pakistan that despite all its economic, social and political privileges, that it realizes that it will finally have to compromise with the Pakistani population on the nature of how the economic pie will be divided in Pakistan. The incipient reality, which has forced the military towards this conclusion, is that though the vast numbers of Pakistani population does not have means to directly threaten its interests; they do have the ability to sway the politics of Pakistan by the virtue of politics of agitation. The Pakistani military’s ability rule Pakistan has always rested on the willing compliance of the people of Pakistan and its political parties to appease military rule, but in the emerging scenario, even though the political parties are willing to negotiate with the military to share the political and economic benefits in Pakistan, a large number of Pakistan’s population is not willing to appease the military’s rule in Pakistan.

It is in this sense that elections of 2007 have a rich symbolic meaning for democracy in Pakistan. The Pakistani military can no longer deny the fact that there is a popular movement against its overarching influence in Pakistan and it realizes fully well that if it postpones the elections, it may be able to cobble together a political reaction which might support an extension of its rule, but it will risk a popular revolt. This will not be a traditional revolt, but the break up of Pakistani politics into a reaction of popular anarchy. The Achilles’ heel of Pakistani military is that its rule of Pakistan is based on the acceptance of that rule and the military itself does not have the means to physically rule Pakistan without the concurrence of the people.

Regardless of the results in 2007, the reality is that for the first time in their history the people of Pakistan have forced the military make a promise and seem determined to hold it to its promise. The days ahead might be dark and even though the future will be gloomy for democracy in Pakistan, it is mitigated by one very reassuring fact and that is, by holding the military responsible for 2007, the people of Pakistan are starting to believe that governments are accountable to the people and not vice versa. In any case, for better or for worse, the year 2007 will be the end and the beginning of a new chapter in the history of Pakistan and the elections of 2007 may turn out to be the year, when the Pakistani electorate finally attains the full maturity of its political adulthood.