The twists and turns of Pakistani politics … Muhammad Ali Ehsan

Politics is meant to solve the problems of people. Those problems cannot be solved by employing power through the barrel of a gun. Our ideological journey as a state has seen many twists and turns. Religion and our collective belief in one faith was used by our leaders in the past as the ideological gel to bind us together as one nation. Yet after many years of independence, we stand divided. The bloodshed that has occurred in our country in the name of religion and sectarian division is a sad testimony to our bumpy ideological journey. Did we ever try to embrace humanism and its secular ideas which could have acted as a great counter force to dislodge, displace and eventually replace the extremist religiosity based on the principles of intolerance and violence?

All social changes erupt and are spurred by ideological, economic and political movements. The lack of any such movements in a society is an indicator that the society lacks enthusiasm, is not vibrant, adheres to the existing conformity and doesn’t struggle for change. History is not only about past but about change; and an underdeveloped countries like Pakistan that wants to do well cannot do so by continuing to adhere to the set of ideals dictated top down by the ruling elite but by giving due attention to the bottom up demands of the people. How does any state going through the process of reformation pay that attention to its people? It does that by engaging with them and listening to their demands.

Our government failed to do so when people belonging to a popular political party came to the capital city on 27 November to record their protest. The treatment meted out to them is the worst that this country has witnessed in its entire history.

People, realising that the Pakistani media is not independent, never relied on it to make sense of what was going on. However, this denial has proved extremely costly because post event social media is filled with all kinds of misinformation leading to difficulties to determine the actual facts and truth. The job of a credible and reliable government is to remove the fog of doubt and uncertainty rather than further proliferating it. The government should allow the people to ask the right questions and take up the moral courage to answer them. What has happened at D-Chowk puts to rest any remaining belief that the people of Pakistan might have been seeing democracy as a means of advancing their interests, protecting and safeguarding their rights and above all treating them as human beings.

The most important change that the West experienced was in how they reassessed their beliefs in their values and ideologies when they decided to become part of the modern world. That reassessment was not without a cost. It took lives of over 100 million people before intolerant and violent ideologies like fascism were obliterated in countries like Germany and Italy. Even communism that took birth as a secular ideology to become basis of creating equality died as a great competitor against capitalism when its later version of Maoism and Stalinism unleashed tyranny on its people to bring about the appropriate social changes that it promised it would bring. Do we want to take a similar course?

Democracy delivered an awakening message and countries all over the world democratised in hordes in their belief that this is without doubt the best form of government. But when in countries like Pakistan democracy fails to deliver what it always promised, what should the people do? Blame the state? Blame the institutions? Blame the lack of ideas? Or blame the lack of social movements that are credited with bringing social change?

Democracy helped bridge the class distinction in the vast population of the advanced societies of the West. Being tried as the political system for so many years now, what has it achieved in countries like Pakistan? Technology instead of being a force multiplier is acting like a curse on democracy and magnifying its defects and shortfalls. Bury your heads in the sand and brush all problems under the carpet is how leadership in countries like Pakistan are finding their way to become part of the modern world. People are not allowed to question the injustice enforced upon them through poverty, wages, lifestyle and oppression. Power in Pakistan no more lies in parliament but in the barrel of a gun.

West has been able to create huge middle-class societies but the façade of democracy in countries like Pakistan is creating more and more poverty. The elite capture of means of production is not only a problem of Third World countries, it is a problem faced by the Western countries as well. Take the example of the United States where in 1974 the top one per cent of families took home nine per cent of GDP. Today that share has increased to over 25%. But in the United States, at least everyone bows before one master – the rule of law. In countries like Pakistan, firstly we have no such data to be able to determine what percentage of GDP is the one per cent of our elite taking home; and secondly the master here is not the rule of law but the elite that has constructed islands of luxury in the country and mansions and palaces abroad while the poor is sinking in the sea of poverty – with the gap ever widening. Democracy was supposed to provide an opportunity to the people to rule themselves and fight for their mutual respect, dignity, honour, opportunities, rights and recognition. What it is giving back to us is hopelessness and crimes against humanity. Was this the kind of Pakistan our founding father had imagined for us to live in and prosper?

If default is defined as the failure to fulfil an obligation than democracy in Pakistan has already defaulted. Let this facade of democracy end. Let us at least allow people to clearly understand that they live in an autocratic state that is fast moving to become a totalitarian state where people will not make a choice but will be told how to live their lives.

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