Democracy in Pakistan
Means Political Defeat to the Army
Zaheeruddin
Dar
THERE
seems to be scant realization of the fact that Pakistan has done
almost everything to entrench itself in a military-authoritarian
order. Now it is almost, if not decidedly, impossible to have
a democracy in this country.
The civilian rule restored for brief periods can be seen in the
light of the following: If democracy is not only appointing a
civilian prime minister and induction of an Assembly serving the
military rule, it has to carry meaning beyond that.
Of
all countries attempting at democratization of their institutions
and polity, Pakistan is the unlikeliest candidate. This county
is proving more willing than any other to stay the present course
of further militarization of its institutions than any other in
the world. Its military has s entrenched itself in the political
fort that now the society has to pay the highest ever cost for
taking a turn toward democracy.
Now Pakistan is like a patient that does not need prescription,
but forced medication. It is clinically and socially established
that patients inflicted by mental disease hate medicines and the
prescription process. If they are not forced-fed the medicines
prescribed, the disorder aggravates.
Those who think that it is only the military that has a disorder
in political approach toward democratization, are wrong, as they
fail to take account of the fact that socially, Pakistan is a
case of hate-democracy. The civilian population has been indoctrinated
enough to hate democratic prescriptions.
To make this indoctrination work, the tablets, capsules and the
vaccinations of political parties have been rendered so ugly in
the public eye that now they look more of a part of the problem
rather than a solution.
Rounds and rounds of accountability have recently been staged
to secure public hatred for the politicians and political parties.
With this background, the disease called 'hate-democracy' has
become so compounded that the political institutions have become
the most unwanted while the military has entrenched itself more
safely in the political fort.
The military secured this safe entrenchment by allowing a partial
share during intermittent induction of civilian rule; getting
most of them corrupted under a design; incapacitating them to
play any role for democratizing the country, and then, by conducting
the accountability process to render them completely invalid for
any kind of politicking in the country.
That is why when some of them were sent behind bars to serve a
range of convictions or exiled, there was no public protest. They
were rendered completely unacceptable to the public. On the other
hand, the take-over by generals was painted as welcome.
Now,
the induction of a civilian rule is poisonous for democratization
of Pakistan, rather than an attempt to create democratic institutions.
The cleavage the army has secured between the public and politicians
serves only one purpose: security of the political fort of the
army in the name of national security.
The more the public-politician cleavage widens, the military feels
safer in its political fort, to carry out its economic agenda
of the Mafia proportions. Pakistan’s attempts at democratization
will always be aborted successfully as long as the military’s
political fort is not attacked, directly.
A direct attack on this fort entails rallying of political forces
on lines that allow only a national struggle against the political
occupation of Pakistan by an army that has a non-national character.
It entails a democratic revolution of the people against the Pakistan
Army. The dream of Paki democratic revolution has a peculiar aspect:
the essential of fighting a national army out of business (not
only power). This entails a class of elite that has a clashing
interest of acute nature with the army, and here is where the
Paki revolution is stuck.
This class, elsewhere leading the democratization process based
on the egalitarian culture, has been unable to assert in Pakistan
for two basic reasons:
Its native chord is in the business and agriculture that has rudimentary
resources too poor and antiquated to help them become competitive
enough against the mighty economic power of the army, which coincides
with the arrival and entrenchment of multinational powers in Pakistan.
This class is too indoctrinated to rise above the vulgarized cleric
attitude retarding its intellectual and political energy to become
strong and brave enough to confront this mighty force of army
that has politically, organizationally and culturally imprisoned
the society.
Its interest has so far been kept limited to a role supportive
to the army’s and multinational’s sublet system, and
has not outgrown it to demand a drastic change of the system,
which could be a motivating power for a movement of revolutionary
character, in the given circumstances;
These crippling factors have rendered this elite politically into
a military-supportive element rather than an independently active
nucleus, as part of the universal democratic forces proving the
engine of change and modernization everywhere.
Democracy for Pakistan means the freedom of people who won freedom
from the British colonial system, but have been subjugated by
the military colonial system appearing in the shape of a garrison
polity or garrison democracy. Democratic freedom now requires
revolutionary steps, as the army does not allow any kind of relief
from the present system.
Only a progressive elite could ensure such a revolutionary movement,
and Pakistan has not been allowed to even have such an elite.
Theories on substituting this class by some other forces of society
for launching a movement for change have so far been nascent and
retarded in themselves.
The clash of multinationals’ interest with that of the army’s
financial and political might is only a new phenomenon, and might
appear on the scene in an open confrontation very slowly, in a
relatively weak or little support to a revolutionary movement
against the army. Pakistanis with a growing bitter socio-political
sense in this situation are finding their population on the rise,
but with no clear direction even on approaching the retrogressive
character of the army, which is the first demand for a change-movement
if it is to be seen in the offing.
This retardation has been imposed on the Pakistani intellectual
circles by the bias-laden mediaeval kind of education system,
the state-sponsored propaganda and the movement of the mullah
that has sucked up and politically crippled a sizeable population
of the peripheral and semi-urban parts of the country.
Living in pre-feudal and tribal social structures and a pre-industrial
formation, generating only small and medium local finances for
manufacture and distribution, more than 80 percent of Pakistanis
are yet to taste any kind of democratic order.
In this situation, coinciding with a growing Muslim narcissism
in Asia in particular and Africa in general, the drift of Pakistan
further into the retrogressive army’s clutches is but natural.
Only a small segment of the society has come to genuinely feel
being socially, politically and geographically captive, thanks
to a flood of information on the rest of the world moving toward
democratization and egalitarianism.
This feeling of subjugation works both ways. Sociologists and
political psychologists tend to agree that social and political
subjugation (of a degree similar to that in Pakistan) causes domestication
of the middle class in general, while, of course, causing an internalized
bitterness in some of its splinters.
This bitterness and irritation does happen to be a cause for a
motivation to politically involve at varying levels with a movement
that aims for changing the face and forces of the society that
hold it in obscurantism and antiquity.
Here, taking a pause we need to understand that domestication
of the middle class in political sense does mean intellectual
subjugation too, but to a certain limit. Growing intellectual
demand for being politically active does need an area of activity,
for which skilful programmers of autocracy (fascists, communists
and military dictatorships) keep theo rising strategies.
The most common strategy evidenced so far in history (of fascism/autocracy/military
rule) is “substituting” nationalism and religious
extremism for democracy and progressive egalitarianism.
We need to thank the political energy of Pakistani middle class
seeing that most of its members have been disillusioned by nationalism
and religious polity by the spinelessness of the military in its
own profession of fighting its target enemy (India), the corruption
rampant in its rank and file, and the wide exposure of the mullah
political forces as political pigmies, corrupt and
illiterate.
Now to the portion of the middle class getting bitter and irritated.
A substantial part of this population has had a craving to flee
this country, but could not and cannot. It now feels rather more
captive to the subjugating factors/forces, and politically incapacitated.
This part of the population has a growing amount of bitterness
that can ignite fragmented manifestation of political rebellion
here and there. But its forming into something big enough to throw
a serious challenge to the army, is still a remote prospect.
How to proceed from here, is the biggest question facing all those
Pakistani intellectuals who indulge in a change theory of Pakistani
political. Stuck with a number of theories of no practical value,
they feel rather more agonized than their less aware compatriots.
Only those watching Pakistan with their blood from here but their
bread and butter abroad, have a chance to indulge in an assessment
of the situation with lesser bitterness and irritation. Can we
reach out to them and exchange notes? With a chance to be free
of the subjugating education and social depressants, they might
have taken advantage and put to good use the energy applicable
to a political movement that can be a treasure for 140 million
Pakistanis.
This
remains an unexplored area, and this communication is intended
to proceed in this direction. Let us pool some of our efforts
here and, at least on experimentation grounds, see what is in
store offshore. Pakistanis abroad, untouchable by the army and
its tentacles, might have a better chance to serve homeland, apart
from the service they render in the shape
of remittances. It is about time they invested back more, in political
terms.
They need information on the situation here, and there might be
a chance to offer them a dream of better homeland, the one that
does not force their heads hang in shame. In the first phase,
it is, however, only for those Pakistanis abroad to involve in
this campaign who have made an attempt or attempts in the past:
To learn about the country; to reach out and make contacts with
political workers and intellectuals to see how things can be improved
back home; to participate in elections; to create an organization
of overseas Pakistanis to involve in suggesting and practically
launching some corrective work in the politico-economic structure
of Pakistan; to write for this purpose; to read materials available
on this issue, and, to bring out dailies, periodicals or communication
letters/Net-sites abroad to create awareness and to make appeals
for participating in such a campaign.
These are the people who could prove vanguard in some manner to
launch a democratisation-of-Pakistan campaign abroad, which could
assume the following features:
A Pakistani group or groups undertaking an organized propaganda
campaign to create awareness among Pakistanis abroad on how their
country is suffering because of army rule and army’s hegemony
in Pakistani politics; on how the army has subjugated the people
culturally, socially, educationally, geographically and demographically;
on how the country’s economy and the livelihoods of the
people have suffered on account of the army’s supremacy
in the public finance, investment, marketing, budgeting, tax-policy
and spending spheres; on how the
country’s political forces have been rendered incapable
of launching democratization movement of any worth; on how the
elite of the country has been rendered into a bankrupt lot, with
a role supportive to the army’s vested interests; on how
this all has eroded all other institutions and corrupted them;
on what kind of corruption the army is indulging in; and, how
all this is
causing a collapse of the country institutionally, economically,
in international affairs, culturally and politically.
Literature required for creating propaganda materials is not available
in Pakistan as work on these lines has remained banned and those
who have attempted to contribute at some levels, have faced imprisonment,
lashes, exile and even deaths at the hands of the army or army-guided
regimes.
A new culture of creating such a literature, its distribution
and application of techniques to popularize such a literature
is required. This work is next to impossible in Pakistan as nothing
on even the rudimentary in this respect can appear in the print
or on the electronic channels.
Overseas Pakistanis can start work in this connection, of course
to be supplied from Pakistan with data, some history, and supportive
materials required for creating such a literature. Newspapers,
periodicals, TV channels and all other relevant means can be used
to create an acceptance space for such a literature among Pakistanis
abroad, and it can even be transported into the country through
emails and other channels.
On the basis of such a literature can be built an overseas political
campaign for democratization of Pakistan, which would have an
inevitable impact on politics and people here. Such a campaign
can be of crucial moral and political support to the democracy
campaigners here who are wedded to the idea that no measure of
democracy could be had in Pakistan without launching a crusade
against the army’s political and economic hegemony.
The political and propaganda campaign undertaken by Pakistanis
abroad can also strengthen the hands of those international lobbies
that are seriously pursuing the goals of putting Pakistan on democratic
rails and ridding this country of the forces that practically
and politically support the extremist forces in this country and
the region.
Like overseas Chinese, most of whom were ardently opposed to the
Communist rule back home, supported their country in an economic
survival campaign, the overseas Pakistanis can help Pakistan shift
from its antiquated and oppressive polity to a democratic one.
It entails a group of strong-headed Pakistanis who are uncompromisingly
prepared to launch such a movement abroad. They can form a publication
cum political movement for this purpose, and help someone from
amongst them rise above the present divisive culture to lead it.
That would be a dream group of Pakistanis and a dream leader who
would make history, if Pakistan and its 140 million people were
lucky enough to see their brothers and sisters abroad helping
a local democracy campaign.
The
writer is a senior Islamabad-based journalist writing under a
different name for obvious reasons.
