[Reader-list] Pakistan is being shaped by popular will as never before

[yasir ~يا سر]

mohsinhamid
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/17/moshin-hamid-pakistan-democracy


Pakistan is being shaped by popular will as never before

The decision to reinstate the chief justice is a fillip for democracy – and
bad news for those waging war in Afghanistan
Comments (63)<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/17/moshin-hamid-pakistan-democracy?commentpage=1>

   - [image: moshin] <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/mohsinhamid>
   -
      - Mohsin Hamid <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/mohsinhamid>
      - The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian>, Tuesday 17
      March 2009
      - Article
history<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/17/moshin-hamid-pakistan-democracy#history-byline>

Yesterday's announcement of the restoration of the chief justice of the
Pakistani supreme court is a victory for those who desire a more
representative state in Pakistan <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/pakistan>.
But it is a blow for Barack Obama, who appears intent on escalating American
military involvement in Afghanistan.

The reason is simple: the US needs a Pakistani state that is significantly
unrepresentative of the Pakistani people, because most Pakistanis are
opposed to America's war in Afghanistan, and the US cannot hope to succeed
there without Pakistan's support.

Pakistan is a vast and complicated country, and it is witnessing many
confusing and contradictory developments. Among the most important of these
appears to be a narrative of increasing representativeness: despite itself,
the Pakistani state is being shaped by the will of its citizens as never
before.

The power of this narrative has been breathtaking, particularly over the
past year and a half. In November 2007, General Musharraf, an unpopular
president, was pressured into giving up his uniform. Three months later the
army stood back and refused to facilitate the rigging of national elections,
allowing Musharraf's party to suffer a crushing defeat. And in August 2008,
Musharraf was removed from the presidency by an unprecedented alliance of
the PPP - the Pakistan People's party - and the Pakistan Muslim League
(Nawaz), or PML-N. It was the first case in Pakistan's history of a military
strongman relinquishing power to democratically elected civilians without
first being killed or plunging the nation into civil war.

And now, a mere half year later, an increasingly autocratic President
Zardari has been forced to restore the chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry. The
result is likely to be increased independence for the judiciary - an
unwelcome development (to say the least) for a man as notoriously corrupt as
Zardari - as well as a rolling back of the powers Musharraf had brought in
to strengthen the executive at the expense of the legislature.

Given Pakistan's unpredictability, this promising narrative of
representativeness could of course still be undermined. But for now, four
related and powerful developments are propelling it along. The first is a
decline in the army's popularity after the rule of Musharraf, and in its
morale after losses in the unpopular campaign against the Pakistani Taliban,
which has made the military reluctant to intervene directly against the will
of the people.

The second is a rapid expansion of the middle class due to economic growth
and urbanisation. For much of this decade, the economy has performed almost
as well as India's, and roughly half the population now live in cities,
towns and built-up borders of major roads that cut across the countryside
and are home to traders rather than farmers.

The third is the complete transformation of the country's media and
communications industries, with dozens of independent television channels
and tens of millions of new mobile phone connections creating, in effect, a
giant electronic public forum.

And the fourth is the exhaustion of ideological cover: customary invocations
of a threat from India and of the need to defend Islam are failing to
explain the state's willingness to use (and have America use) violence
against its own people in large swaths of its own territory.

It was by ignoring this emerging climate in Pakistan that Zardari found
himself in the embarrassing - and, for him, politically dangerous - position
of needing to reverse course on the issue of the chief justice. Zardari was
proceeding from the old-school assumption that he who controls the state
controls Pakistan. As president, and with a hand-picked retainer as governor
in the most populous province of Punjab, Zardari thought he could with
impunity dismiss the provincial government of the PML-N when its insistence
on the restoration of Chaudhry became too irritating.

But then something unprecedented happened. Civil society denounced the move.
The media cried foul. Zardari's low poll ratings collapsed. A minister in
the national PPP government stepped down. Senior provincial bureaucrats
resigned rather than act as directed by the governor to prevent a protest
march led by Nawaz Sharif, the PML-N leader and former prime minister.
Police officers in Punjab refused to follow orders.

The march went ahead, and it grew in numbers by the thousands, advancing
towards Islamabad. The top-down Pakistani state found itself facing a
bottom-up revolt. Authority was flowing from something other than the will
of a tyrant - a novel concept in Pakistan. Zardari was being told that the
country now believed in certain rules, and even he would have to abide by
them. Dismissing democratically elected provincial governments and
undermining the judiciary was just not on. All of which must have come to
Zardari, an inveterate rule-breaker, as quite a surprise.

Where all this will lead is uncertain. For Pakistan, if the will of the
people can be harnessed to democratic institutions and to politicians who
learn to respect the notion of shared power, there is reason for great hope.
If not, today's agitation could become tomorrow's revolution.

I have been inundated with congratulatory messages from Pakistani friends,
many of them normally supporters of the Zardari-led PPP. It all feels like a
birthday, and more than one person has said that today will be remembered as
the day a truly democratic Pakistan was born. After the horror of this
month's terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team, many Pakistanis are
celebrating much-needed good news.

For President Zardari, recent events represent a significant defeat. He is
favoured by the same foreign governments who favoured President Musharraf,
and for the same reason: his willingness to resist popular outrage over the
war in Afghanistan and its consequences for Pakistan. But Zardari is also
like his predecessor in his propensity for undemocratic excesses. Now he,
too, is discovering that in the new Pakistan he is less powerful than he had
imagined.

For the rest of the world, and particularly the US, Britain and Nato, the
choice is becoming increasingly stark. If a war fought by democracies for
control of Afghanistan, a country of 30 million people, requires for its
successful prosecution the undermining of democracy in Pakistan, a country
of 170 million, is that really a price worth paying?

Mohsin Hamid is the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist
mohsinhamid.com <http://www.mohsinhamid.com/>