Daily Times

“Even the worst democracy is better than the best of dictatorships.” Have you ever felt like breaking your TV screen while listening to this famous statement made by Prime Minister Gilani in a desperate attempt to defend his government?

In a state of extreme hopelessness after facing a new trouble every day, it creates a lot of confusion in a common person’s mind about why democracy, which has been so successful in other countries, has failed to deliver in Pakistan. Pakistanis have welcomed government servants in uniform (whose salaries are paid from our taxes) to rule us. They come in the name of saving the country, provide some short-term ad hoc benefits and end up leaving the country at the verge of a disaster. This situation has turned into a vicious cycle and we have lost direction.

As we struggle for survival, every passing day makes it difficult for us as a nation to breathe. Is democracy the solution? Should we let democracy run its course? Will democracy mature in Pakistan after a couple of elections as it did in India? To affirm or negate these questions, let us try to understand democracy along with other political models to see where our system fits in currently and where it should be.

Aristotle, who is regarded as one of the most influential ancient thinkers in a number of philosophical fields such as political theory, has presented his famous constitutional theory: “Constitutions which aim at the common advantage are correct and just without qualification, whereas those which aim only at the advantage of the rulers are deviant and unjust, because they involve despotic rule which is inappropriate for a community of free persons.” The distinction between correct and deviant constitutions is combined with the observation that the government may consist of one person, a few, or a multitude. Hence, there are six possible constitutional forms divided into two forms, correct or deviant. Kingship (one ruler), aristocracy (few rulers) and polity (many rulers) fall into the correct or just classification whereas tyranny (one ruler), oligarchy (few rulers) and democracy (many rulers) fall into the deviant and unjust classification. So the first question is whether we should have one ruler, few rulers or many rulers.

In any society, the most dominant class is always the lower middle class, irrespective of how developed a society is. The reason for this is that such a classification is always relative, not absolute. The lower class of a Scandinavian country may be equivalent to the elite class of an East African country but it will still be known as the lower class in Scandinavia and will dominate in numbers. So the criteria for deciding whether there are few rulers or many rulers is how well your governing class reflects this break-up. It means that if your governing class is majorly comprised of elite rulers, then there must be few rulers (in the context of proportion of population). If the system is open to allow anyone to come up and lead on the basis of merit then the ruling class is bound to show significant representation of the poor.

There is no need for examples and arguments to prove the fact that the ruling class in Pakistan is dominated by few feudal, civil and military bureaucrats and those who come from education systems that 90 percent of the population cannot afford. More interestingly, there are barriers for upcoming leaders who claim to be more competent and dedicated than existing ones.

Two major political parties in Pakistan constantly blame each other for looting, corruption and mismanagement; however, the blame game is limited to the extent of press releases and statements only. They agree that if they try to throw the other out of the system, the system will collapse. Therefore, they fail to reach the court of law and are never prosecuted sincerely by the federal or provincial governments. The blame game is instead used as a weapon to bargain political advantage with the other party. For example, there were 135 target killers arrested in Karachi according to government sources. Three concerned political parties, despite their animosity towards each other, agreed not to disclose their political affiliations.

The rule is very simple. In national politics, there are two indispensable persons, who are the heads of indispensable parties irrespective of their moral worth and their governance performance. If something happens to them, their next of kin will take over. Else, according to their definition, this system will collapse. This allows us to categorise our system vertically in the ‘few rulers’ category (two to be exact in national politics and few more in provincial politics).

To look at whether our legislations and policies aim towards common advantage or deviant is the next question at hand. Without going into too much detail, just compare our taxation system with a welfare state like the US. In the US, about 35 percent tax is given by one percent of the population and 75 percent tax is given by just six percent. This is due to a direct taxation system, which ensures the common advantage and fair distribution of wealth. In Pakistan, only a small percentage of the salaried population, pays direct taxes (according to an estimate, only two percent people) while 61 percent of the parliamentarians do not pay taxes at all. Almost 30 percent of the land is owned by miniscule 0.5 percent land grabbers. I do not think we need any more examples to conclude that our legislation is aimed towards a deviant advantage. So, actually it is not a war between ‘dictatorship’ and ‘democracy’; it is a war between ‘tyranny’ and ‘oligarchy’, which are both unjust and deviant systems.

This game of misleading definitions of declaring martial law as dictatorship and elections as democracy should come to an end. The beneficiaries of this cycle of switching between tyranny and oligarchy have fooled the nation enough. Our nation needs to wake up and reject both equally damaging systems. People should stop being betrayed by the word ‘democracy’ or blackmailed by the fear of a martial law. The debate we need to focus on is whether we need an ‘aristocracy’ or a ‘democracy’. But for this, we will need to break the current cycle and make sure not to leave vacuum for these opportunists and hijackers ready to grab an opportunity. We must support and stand up for the forces of change. This is the right time to do it. It is now or never!

The writer is a software quality assurance manager by profession and a management science scholar, pursuing his PhD in Management Sciences