Daily Times

I must confess that I remain befuddled both at how a wide strata of people can continue supporting the Pakistani Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) after the incredibly damning confessions of Javed Hashmi came to light during the dharna (sit-in), and also at how Javed Hashmi did not win wide levels of support even after he took such a brave and daring step against his own party and its alleged collusion with the military. One explanation is simply that people simply do not believe Hashmi’s allegations. This, of course, always remains a possibility though in my view, highly unlikely. However, the second, and much more worrying possibility is that people are becoming increasingly disillusioned by parliamentary democracy itself and there is already a swelling tide of opinion in favour of a return to military rule.

The lessons of the past can easily be forgotten. All the more easily when politics itself is undergoing a generational shift and when the ideas of the previous generation are, if not being challenged, at least being treated with great scepticism. Who can deny that Imran Khan has captured the imagination of the urban middle class youth? A youth that has not seen nor endured the hardships of a stern military dictatorship and hence is utterly unaware of what we have gained by struggling for democracy. The more troubling argument is not that “There is no collusion with the army” but “So what if there is a collusion, what has democracy brought us?” Perhaps the question should be responded to with dialectical negation. We can only know what democracy has won for us if we are able to identify what we have lost as a consequence of military dictatorship. Let us go down the list.

Firstly, it is because of successive military dictatorships that the government of Pakistan, in the past and even in the present, has a lopsided share of defence spending. Military dictatorships are incentivised to keep us in a perpetual state of low intensity conflict with India, justifying military spending and draining resources away from economic development. One can demonstrate (though not within the limits of this article) how creative accounting has been used to disguise these expenditures under a civilian head. At any rate, no one can deny the historical record (when people were more honest about their spending) that has resulted in an opportunity cost, especially lower spending on health and education over a long period of time. Democracy has not changed this situation but it is the only process that has the potential to change our development priorities.

Second, let us not forget that military dictatorship is principally the reason for the breakup of the country in 1971. We love to pin the blame on Bhutto but the facts are that the anger that fuelled Bengali nationalism was the result of the unequal economic policies of Ayub Khan followed by the military operation of Yahya Khan. Next to nothing has been learnt from that history and the same policies with countless barbarities and a neocolonial policy that continues to estrange people continues unabated in Balochistan.

Thirdly, how can anyone deny that it is the military dictatorship of Ziaul Haq that bears chief responsibility for the religious extremism in Pakistan, responsible for the killing of 50,000 people. It was during the so-called Afghan jihad that these outfits were funded (with the help of the CIA) and trained by our very own. It was this so-called jihad that resulted in the Kalashnikov culture and drug culture that pervaded Pakistan in the 1980s. And when we speak of corruption, it is principally the 1980s that saw the rapid acceptance of graft and corruption in national and civil life.

Fourth, military dictatorship must be held principally responsible for torturing, even killing, countless democratic political activists, foisting undemocratic and fascist political parties, protecting the super-rich ruling class from land reforms or other welfare state measures and creating a militarised undemocratic and even violent armed political and social culture.

None of the problems created by military dictatorship have even been addressed, let alone reversed, by elected governments. Hence, the inability on the part of the population to distinguish between democracy and military dictatorship is perfectly understandable. However, democracy remains a prerequisite for us to actually raise, address and reverse these practices and mistakes of the past and to build a better future. To use Aristotle’s distinction, democracy is a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition for us to build a new Pakistan.

Sadly, democratic forces have been so pulverised, beaten and decimated that they fight not for the reversal of these historical wrongs, not even for the right to speak on these wrongs in the national debate (a few honourable exceptions aside), but for the possibility of speaking about these wrongs sometime in the far future. And even that right, that is the right of raising these concerns at some far away distant point in time in the future, remains tenuous at this conjuncture of political history. That is the ironic and sad reality of contemporary democratic politics in Pakistan.

The writer is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at LUMS, spokesperson for Laal (the band), and General Secretary of the Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party (CMKP)