The international response to the disqualification of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is somewhat telling. It is also rather expected. And it follows the western liberal paradigm that places the utmost importance on elections as the be-all-and-end-all benchmark of democracy. If only it were that simple. The general consensus when it comes to those engaged in bread-and-butter political punditing appears to be that Pakistan is at risk from the big boys at GHQ. This may or may not be true. Though the chances of a hard coup do appear unlikely. At least we hope so for Imran Khan’s sake. The general consensus also dictates that the perilous state in which the country currently finds itself is all the fault of the Supreme Court, which has been sufficiently audacious to flex its judicial muscles to knockout a sitting PM that the people had elected. When Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, the US immediately went on record as saying that the scheduled elections must go ahead no matter what. Today, the response from Washington has been rather more muted: it is an internal matter, so says the State Department. This is well advised. So, why this fixation on elections alone? Meaning that democracy must surely name the process through which it comes into being. There are some here in this country who would argue that any civilian governments elected on the back of a military dictator’s National Reconciliation Ordinance effectively surrendered the right to boast of being freely and fairly elected the by the people for the people. They have a point and it is one that goes beyond the usual causal objectification of Pakistanis being unready for democracy, as if the latter were nothing more than a readymade coming-of-age gift. It is not just here that elections are nitpicked over in terms of procedural norms. And in this instance, we do mean procedural norms as opposed to technical irregularities. The Scottish independence referendum of 2014 was hailed at the time as the epitome of self-determination. By everyone but the Scottish nationalist parties. This was more than a case of mere sour grapes at losing the popular vote. The latter rightly protested the last minute inclusion by Whitehall of binding conditions less than a month before ballot boxing began, such as the drastically increased Scottish national debt servicing obligations. To our mind such manoeuvrings render null and void the concept of a free and fair vote. Bluntly put, the electorate was not fully informed during the entire electioneering process. Similarly, when Gordon Brown finally got his mitts on the keys to Number 10 — he dropped the bombshell that the Chilcot inquiry findings would be published after the after the next general elections. Once again, serious questions are raised when it comes to British parliamentary democracy. We would like to remind our global well-wishers of their symbolic support for the lawyers’ movement that was said to have prompted Gen Musharraf’s political demise. And as we do so we would also ask them to cast their minds back and to recall if their governments have ever truly done anything to strengthen Pakistani democracy in terms of institution building. We say this not to be flippant or trite. For the West has certainly flashed the cash in our direction, however capriciously that may have seemingly been. The US, for example, had promised us some $7.5 billion as a thank you for returning towards the democratic path. For some of Pakistanis, this was little more than the drone dividend. And after the devastating floods of 2010 — the tranches were redirected towards relief and reconstruction efforts. This was perhaps the best to be made of a bad situation, given how one particular American aid maestro ‘warned’ that the US could influence just how much international donor money would trickle into Pakistani coffers. And finally we would like to reassure everyone who is so very concerned for Pakistan’s future, that regardless of how fledging and flawed our very young democracy may be — we have at least begun the process of holding our leaders to account. Institutions take time to grow and the future Parliaments will imbibe some of the lessons from the recent episode.* Published in Daily Times, July 30th , 2017.