[Reader-list] Politics and Democracy in Pakistan

[Bhrigu]

Himal (South Asian)
January 2002 Issue 
Pakistan 

                              OUR ENDANGERED SPECIES
                                                BY 
                                          AQIL SHAH 

Noam Chomsky says humans are an “endangered species” and given the nature of 
their institutions, they are likely to destroy themselves in a fairly short 
time. When Chomsky was in Pakistan in late November 2001 to deliver the 
Distinguished Eqbal Ahmed Annual Lecture, I asked him about the survival 
prospects of civilian institutions and society in Pakistan, a ‘species’ 
endangered by the institutional hegemony of a pathologically powerful 
military establishment. With a curiosity unique to his razor sharp mind, 
Chomsky threw the ball right back at me: “Do you see any glimmer of hope?” In 
response, I inadvertently found myself playing the proverbial prophet of doom.
At the turn of the new millennium, when most countries around the world have 
more or less accepted democracy as the best possible form of government, 
Pakistan is still grappling with unending praetorianism. After eleven years 
of electoral democracy in which power alternated between the Pakistan Peoples 
Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) often at the behest 
of the military, the generals seized direct control in October 1999.
How did Pakistan get here? The roots of praetorianism date back to the early 
years of Independence when a host of external and internal factors combined 
to tilt the civil-military institutional equation in favour of the military. 
For one, a migrant political leadership lacking in a domestic political 
constituency continually resorted to extra-constitutional tactics to hold on 
to power. At the same time, the fledgling state prioritised national defence 
over critical development needs as it faced a hostile neighbourhood. 
Moreover, weak civilian administrations routinely fell back on the 
well-organised military to undertake even day-to-day civilian tasks. This 
reliance on the military gradually eroded respect for civilian authority 
among the men in khaki, spurring them to ‘save Pakistan’ at the slightest 
sign of political instability. The military ultimately emerged as a 
domineering vested interest in state and society.
This superimposition of the military on vital aspects of civil and political 
life over the decades has stripped civilian authority of even its basic 
functions. Be it federal or provincial administrations, universities, 
examination boards, public utility corporations, state research institutions, 
the military has gradually ‘taken over’ in the name of promoting 
accountability and reducing corruption. Militarisation is not just limited to 
the public sector. Name a vital sector of the economy (logistics, public 
works, fertiliser, cement, sugar production) and the military runs it tax 
free, clearly undermining any chances of fair competition, besides crowding 
out scarce investment resources required for private sector development.
Finance Ministry insiders also whisper of the financial rot within the 
military which, subject to little external scrutiny, claims a lion’s share of 
the government’s budget. The military’s unquestioned dominance of state 
affairs coupled with its holy cow public image allows it to act the untainted 
angel while holding its civilian counterparts accountable for their actions. 
For instance, under the current military regime’s much touted accountability 
process, civil officials and anti-military politicians are hauled up in the 
name of ‘fair account- ability’ while military officers are excluded under 
the convenient pretext of existing stringent internal accountability 
mechanisms. 

Desperate optimism

The long-term effect of the military’s consolidation of civil and political 
affairs has been disastrous in other ways. Military rule has wrought 
pervasive deintellectualisation and depoliticisation on Pakistani society. 
The various factors have coalesced to tranquilise the society so that it is 
unable to tackle its internal contradictions, nor be aware of its due place 
in governing the country, or its inalienable right to challenge the state’s 
unlawful coercion. Thus far, the ‘attentive public’ has remained confined to 
the fringes of politics. “Politics is just not our business,” is the 
ingenuous reaction of most middle-class Pakistanis to all matters political, 
willing as they are to give the military the benefit of the doubt till an 
imaginary “leader with vision” shows up on the horizon. The public has been 
confused by the constant harping on the failures of elected governments by 
democracy’s influential detractors, liberal and otherwise.
In the opinion of these detractors, eleven years of what General Pervez 
Musharraf calls “sham democracy” had worsened corruption in government, 
failed to ensure the rule of law, fanned ethnic and sectarian politics, 
undermined key state institutions, politicised the civil service and failed 
in implementing much-needed structural reforms. Hence, military intervention 
had become a necessary evil. Given Islamabad’s external threat perceptions, 
this acquiescence to the military’s political involvement is even 
understandable. But in this desperate optimism, Pakistanis have failed to 
realise that with each foray into politics the military develops its own 
political ambitions and usurps civilian poles of power.
Military rulers, seeking political legitimacy, invariably play off ethnic, 
religious or other pro-military groups against mainstream political forces, 
thus creating a peculiar set of distortions in society. And in all fairness, 
the insecure elected governments have had little room to maneuver in the face 
of overwhelming policy constraints imposed by scarce government revenues, 
large debt and defence burdens, externally im posed harsh economic 
conditionalities, the needs of political give and take, and-- on top of it 
all— a military establishment with an exclusive control over crucial national 
defence, security and nuclear policies. 
Ironically, after two years in power the military remains as clueless about 
managing Pakistan’s complex governance crisis as were the “corrupt” 
politicians it replaced to “reconstruct real democracy”. Despite his 
self-important rhetoric of providing good governance, General Musharraf has 
set about the business of government by nakedly perverting the civilian share 
of the state, centralising power within a close-knit cohort of trusted senior 
military commanders, manipulating the political process in favour of pliant 
pro-military politicians, while brutally suppressing legitimate political 
opposition.
The events of 11 September 2001 and the changed geo-political alignments have 
turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the general. The immediate needs 
of the war on terror have made a secure and stable dictatorship in Pakistan 
indispensable for the Americans. As expected, the international community’s 
calls for restoration of civilian rule have been pushed to the back burner. 
This outright international support gives the general-president complete 
control over the chessboard of Pakistani politics— in essence allowing him to 
create another period of ‘guided democracy’ in which the military determines 
who is fit to rule Pakistan. 
The million-rupee question is this: where does the country go from here? 
Given the almost universal failure of military experiments in Pakistan, it 
seems safe to argue that the country’s salvation rests on an uninterrupted 
political process. Political democracy, despite numerous imperfections, makes 
citizens sovereign. Their allegiance to the state is contingent on their 
willful agreement to the exercise of its legal and political imperatives. At 
least in theory, the state is not allowed to exercise these imperatives for 
its own sake, or for granting preferential advantage to dominant groups or 
classes. Representative and judicial institutions keep a check on the state’s 
arbitrariness. Democratic political processes, however, evolve slowly. 
Institutional checks and balances, that may take a long time to evolve, 
ensure that no leader takes the public for a ride and gets away with it. 
As a critical first step, the ‘attentive public’ of Pakistan must partake in 
politics. Indeed, the power of the state is so colossal that individual 
attempts to engage or challenge will be like crying in the wilderness. To be 
effective, societal political endeavours require the integrated support of a 
broad coalition of interests, and aggressive lobbying of the news media, 
political parties and Parliament too is critical. But all this can be done 
only if Pakistanis at home and abroad recognise that non-democratic 
experiments, whether military or civilian, are disastrous for the polity in 
the long run.
Towards the end of our meeting, Chomsky was curious about the state of the 
Pakistani intelligentsia. “What role are they playing?” he asked, “Have they 
been able to reach out to the larger public?” Exiled, co-opted, harassed, or 
marginalized, I replied, intellectuals too are an “endangered species” in 
Pakistan.