The current debate engulfing Pakistan is between those who say they are for democracy, and those who are convinced that the dispensation currently holding sway in the land is anything but democracy, and that it is sinful to call it so.
This is the top layer of the debate that has long raged in Pakistan i.e. whether it is the army or the politicians who have failed Pakistan. One side of this debate argues that the army has not “allowed” democracy to take root, while the other side argues that but for the venality and sheer incompetence of the politicians, the army would not have dared to step in, in the first place. As proof of this is cited the applause and celebration which has burst forth in the wake of every army take-over.
A debate, any debate, is a healthy exercise only if both the debaters state their positions with conviction, but their aim is not merely to score points in order to win the contest. The aim of both sides of a national debate should be to identify what is good for society, and what is inimical; to further the one and to retard the other. For this it is absolutely essential that both sides to the debate first acknowledge utter and unvarnished truth to themselves i.e. of facts so well known, that they are basically not debatable.
In order to take this army vs, the politician debate further, it would be difficult to deny a few basic truths, viz:
- It is a violation of the constitution for the army to take over reins of political power of the country; as it is also equally a violation of the same constitution if politicians misinterpret the constitution to blunt or make nullify the spirit of democracy.
- Of the many ills which afflict any society, the bane of financial corruption is unique. It is not only sinful in itself, but it has the power to degrade everything it touches. When this practice receives long and dedicated adherence from the leadership of a country, it not only destroys any possibility of good governance, but it also percolates down to the whole of society, and eventually gains moral acceptance. That is when it completes the rot and utter degeneration of society as a whole, can be its only sure result. Corruption therefore is antithetical to good governance, and without good governance democracy loses all value. c.When such an advanced state of national rot has been reached, the constitution and all the laws that fall under it, lose their efficacy. They become moribund for any purpose other than being used for vacuous debate, and for selective quotation to uphold the very system which has destroyed the society which it was meant to serve and secure. When this stage has been reached, the strongest alternate power in the state will contrive to displace the existing dispensation. Over the last 67 years as the army and the politicians have taken turns to ruin Pakistan, finally society has reached its present state of degeneracy where theft is no longer considered a moral issue by a vast majority of the populace. The most pronounced period of this slippage started when Musharraf decided to hitch his wagons to the Chaudharys of Gujrat. His signing the NRO was the formal validation of corruption by our political leadership. And Zardari’s five years of unfettered theft took us to the nadir on our route to degeneracy. Nawaz Sharif took over where Zardari left off. Because the methodology employed by the Sharif family is distinct from the ambuscades which Zardari employs, it is difficult to assess how much he has despoiled us of during his current spell as P.M. All one is certain of at this stage is that he has brought with him new standards of incompetence, executed by a charmed circle of close relatives and court favourites, which have stood in for the parliament for the first 14 months of his present reign.
In the last fifteen years or so, the only gain one can be thankful for, is that whenever I have met the closest supporters of Nawaz Sharif or Zardari in private, and suggested to them that they were serving the cause of bandits, not one of them countered with even a whimper of a remonstrance. Thus, truth still survives in one small corner of silence!
This debate therefore, whether it is the army that has done greater harm to the country, or it is the politicians, I find both banal and juvenile. I find it thus because it is so willfully blind, as it misses the forest for the trees. It fails to see that this is a collective failure of the privileged class as a whole, to which people like me also belong, as do the judges and the bureaucrats, and business people, and the feudal lords. And the price of this failure has been paid by the little man in whose name both the politician and the general have governed. The fact that the drift for the under-privileged has been downward, and has been very steep, irrespective of whether it was a general or a politician ruling the country, is evidenced by the fact that the gap between the rich and the poor has never been so wide as it is today. And it has never yawned wider than it has in the last seven years, coinciding with the greatest flourishing of democracy in Pakistan!
When the best that a “system” can provide is progressively poorer governance, lesser security, greater injustice, and gathering poverty, one must conclude that either democracy cannot deliver, or that this is not democracy.
Among other differences there is one distinct difference between the army and the politicians, which has influenced governance. When a military dictator has tried to enhance the security of his rule, he has tended to retire swathes of peers from whom he could expect a challenge, and promoted those he thought he could rely on. This progressively degraded the generalship in the army and destroyed the culture of professional dissent. But it left the Lt Col and below largely untouched. These ranks kept lazily deteriorating in step with society as a whole, without suffering a catastrophic meltdown. It is because of this that in many a battle it has been the junior ranks, largely functional despite the deterioration, that have retrieved situations created by blundering superiors and given an excellent account of themselves in operations like Zarb e Azb, or during relief operations like the present-day floods. Thus, the junior ranks of the army were always a steady and reliable fall back resource for the military dictator, whose first line of security was always the generals around him.
The dictator therefore was not looking towards the police and the bureaucracy for the security of his rule. Thus, these two cadres functioned under military dictatorships with comparatively less interference and greater freedom of action. This often got translated into at least marginally better governance.
The fallback ranks and services for political leaders on whom they should have been able to depend, to bail them out of a difficult situation, are this very same bureaucracy and the police. But every political leader on assuming power, without exception, destroyed the pride and effectiveness of these cadres by reducing their status to that of sniveling personal servants, to guard and further their illegalities. Thus, under political leaders, these public servants have never been used for providing good governance to the people of Pakistan, without which the very purpose of their existence cannot be justified. And being so corroded, it is beyond them to bail out a political leader in distress, as the junior ranks of the army could always potentially do for a military dictator.
The rot and hopelessness which we see around us is not merely incidental to the “systems” we have been ruled by. They are the result of deliberate policy. When those wielding power, whether generals or politicians, are driven by motives of greed and eternal power, the steps they take to gratify the one and secure the other are deliberate steps, consciously taken at the cost of the people. Little can be more deliberate than this.
Just take a glance at the long sessions of the joint houses of parliament that have recently met. Except for heaping invective, often justifiably, at those collected in dharnas outside, and reaffirming their great love for democracy and the constitution and Nawaz Sharif, they have done little else. Most significantly, there has not been a single full-length debate in parliament about what essentially ails the people of Pakistan, and what may be done to correct the situation. Governance for them is not, and has never been the issue. Keeping power and their riches intact is, and always will be. And they seem to believe that by crying out “democracy” and “constitution”, they have done adequate service to both.
This attitude cannot last. The debate will ultimately change shape and will be played out in violence. The Supreme Court and the Army should join forces to stave off what lies ahead. Of course, our democrats, who are so zealously committed to keeping the purity of democracy unstained, would not want to hear a word of this. But both the army and the S.C are national institutions who owe it to the nation to stop its slide into chaos. What will cause them hesitation is that both have political histories which cannot inspire much confidence. This may be their chance to redeem themselves. The country itself is nearly as important as its democracy and constitution. All three can survive if for once the army is not driven by the urge to take power, but to work with the Court to put the root causes of the fray to rest, because our politicians have clearly decided that their strongest suit is to trade mutual insults, both in and outside the parliament, while their land drowns in the floods and a sea of tears.