The democracy show has been closed for renovation. We are promised by the management that it will be reopening in October. There will be some, as yet announced, changes in script and cast. For your amusement in the meanwhile we present in the foyer the Jatoi government….
While democracy remains but a show, and power but a spectacle for the people to behold but not wield, this nation will remain shackled by fatalism, ignorance, and indifference. The votes we cast just 18 months ago have now been declared valueless by the President. In doing so, he has also declared the democratic process null and void.
He has done so by failing to preserve a distinction between the democratic system and the democratic process. Democracies are not born in all their splendour, they strive for it. And it takes time; time for the judiciary to gain the confidence — and the stubborn arrogance — to stand up to governments, time for the media to find a balance between its responsibilities and its freedoms. Democracy is not just an elected assembly, it is made up for a whole host of inter-linking institutions, institution, and perceptions, all acting as checks and balances on the exercise of power. And these cannot be magicked out of thin air; they come only with experience — and with mistakes. This is the democratic process. A process we only started in November 1988.
Progress since then has been slow, painfully slow. But it was progress down the only path we can take if we want a prosperous and stable Pakistan. Freedom of expression and jails devoid of political prisoners were achieved. Yet old habits of political corruption, uninhibited by institutions like the police who remain in thrall to political power, continued unchecked.
While one could only sit and nod at most of the President’s indictment of the present democratic system, his failure to allow for the democratic process leaves grave doubt as to the future of democracy in this country. For our history teaches us that there are no bureaucratic or military short cuts to a mature democracy.
And if there are no short cuts, and if the President cannot institute an efficient, corruptionless, and blameless democracy within 90 days, as surely he cannot, where can he step next if he remains blind to the democratic process? He will find himself in the same spot as General Zia found himself 90 days after he dissolved the assemblies, desperately thrashing about for a legitimacy to cover the nakedness of his power.
The President clearly does not envisage finding himself in such a situation. He is an experienced operator who probably knows the intricacies of Pakistani politics better than anybody. He must surely recognise that a mature democracy cannot be brought about by 90 days of Presidential rule, not even by 900. Respect for his intelligence and experience must surely bring one to doubt that he intends an election on the model of the ’88 polls. Already there are intimations that he will not be an impartial actor in the drama to come.
Lacking from his address to the nation was any indication that the horse-trading and corruption that infected the National Assembly was just an instance of a wider epidemic that infected all the Assemblies, including those of the Punjab and Balochistan. The fact that these two houses were allowed to dissolve themselves is significant. It releases the new federal government from any duty to proceed in corruption cases against either the Punjab or Balochistan governments.
If we are now to be spectators to a persecution of one party, the PPP, then we must accept that the President has not taken our democracy in trust but has robbed us of our hope in the future. Whatever criticism we might make of the PPP, and there are many to be made, its existence offers the only chance that the military and the bureaucracy might be induced to lessen their influence on power. If Ishaq Khan’s dissolution of the assemblies turns out to be a reassertion of that power after a two year struggle with an infant democracy, then his name will join that of General Zia’s on the list of people who have kept this country from its future.