The people will

Those of us who endorse democracy and government by consent of the people — including, of course, this writer — are usually keen to claim that the foundations of Pakistan are embedded in democratic values. Our independent statehood — as we continually point out to supporters of the military-bureaucratic autocracies that have mostly ruled us — is the product of the exercise of the will of the Muslim masses of undivided India, as expressed through the elections of 1946.
However, let’s face a couple of facts. The first is that the specific choice, of whether or not there should be a separate state of Pakistan, was never explicitly offered to the voters, who were in fact electing members of Provincial Assemblies that would, in turn, choose the members of a Constituent Assembly for India. Secondly, the ‘masses’ had no part in the matter anyhow since the electorate was a restricted one, with only British Indian citizens who met certain criteria of education, property ownership or payment of taxes/revenues being franchised and no voting rights whatsoever for the people of the princely states.
Did the people, then, actually exercise a democratic ‘choice’ in 1946? History shows that, yes, they did in fact vote. With their feet. With their passions. With their very lives. But that is an issue to which we will return.
In the new state of Pakistan, the first time the people’s will was expressed was in 1949 in the province of Punjab, where the same kind of restricted franchise voted out the ‘old’ Muslim League faction headed by Nawab Iftikhar Hussain Mamdot and voted in the ‘young’ faction headed by Mian Mumtaz Daultana. A broader, but still not universal, franchise exercised its voting rights in 1954 in the former East Pakistan. Here, in the only Pakistan province where that had seen clear Muslim League majorities since 1937, the opposition Jugto (‘United’) Front achieved a massive victory, reducing the ruling League to a rump opposition of only eight Provincial Assembly seats.
In 1962, under the self-appointed Field Marshall’s dispensation, the first national level general elections were held. Universal franchise, for the first time. BUT only indirect, to an electoral college of 80,000 ‘Basic Democrats’. Reduced representation of the East Wing. And no political parties. The resulting majorities for the Field Marshall’s supporters from this kind of massive ‘pre-poll rigging’ were scarcely surprising — even the Leader of the Opposition was his elder brother. But, here and there, a number of the erstwhile politicians consistently derided by the regime, mostly from the East Wing, were unexpectedly returned to the Assembly.
Hoping to strengthen his hold, the Field Marshall formed his own “King’s Party” and ordered another General Election, of the same indirect kind, at the end of 1964. The unexpected candidature of Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah directly against him discomfited Ayub’s regime and he was obliged to indulge in the most blatantly obvious rigging to ensure his own victory.
The first true General Elections, in 1970, need not be commented on here, other than to say that the vote was uncompromisingly anti-Establishment. The 1977 Elections are germane to our present context. With the opposition claiming rigging in their aftermath, massive urban uprisings took place, which unsettled the PPP government and brought in the black Zia years. The shamelessly biased electoral rules of Zia’s 1985 elections produced, to everyone’s surprise, the gentlemanly Junejo government. And then came the four quick elections of 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1996. Each of these is believed to have been rigged, but no public protests followed. As regards the shameless orgy of gerrymandering, blatant manipulation and outright rigging over which the present regime presided in 2002, the less said the better. The point is that, even after all this, President Musharraf’s supporters had to cobble together a veritable patchwork quilt of parties and independents to achieve only a single seat majority.
In all these elections over the years, two points do emerge. The first is that each and every election, direct or indirect, rigged or honest, has in some way or the other surprised the Establishment of the time or has actually led to governmental change. No wonder that President Musharraf thought it necessary to secure his own re-election from the outgoing Parliament!
The second point is that despite repeated electoral rigging and outright Establishment chicanery, the only time that people actually took to the streets in protest was in 1977. If any of my readers are still naïve enough to believe that the PNA agitations were some kind of spontaneous eruption of public agitation, let me remind them that although the elections were due in March, the first Payah Jaam strike had taken place, as a kind of rehearsal, in February. Two weeks before the election day, Asghar Khan announced, on behalf of the PNA, that if they did not win the elections, that would be taken as ‘proof’ of rigging and an agitation would be launched. So much for a ‘spontaneous’ outpouring of the people’s anger! But, indeed, why expect such leaderless, unorganised ‘spontaneity’ that would probably have been merely destructive and anarchic?
And now we come to today and the general elections just over two weeks ahead of us. These are taking place in the looming shadows of monumental governmental incompetence, abysmal economic failure, massive unemployment, wheat fiasco, energy fiasco, violence, assassination and more than one armed insurrection.
What can we expect?
I will not offer any predictions, other than to suggest that, in the first place, people are sceptical as to whether the elections will actually take place. If they do take place, there is apprehension about whether the law and order situation will allow them to cast their votes. If votes do get cast, and some kind of Parliament does get elected, it will quickly find itself on a collision course with an already elected President, who clearly has every intention of remaining in power.
So, where do we go from here? Will the people continue to accept more of the same that they have been receiving for much too long now? Will, for example, the people of interior Sindh, exchanging cassettes of Benazir’s speeches and hugely mourning her murder, accept continuation of the status quo? And what about Balochistan, where all the major political parties are boycotting the elections anyhow?
The fact is that the opposition parties will need to take a few leaves out of the PNA’s handbook: they will need to get together, get prepared for the likely post-election scenarios, and get seriously organised. Inherited charisma is not enough; hard work and meticulous planning are necessary.
The alternative is a disordered, chaotic eruption of popular passions in the wake of the elections, as one saw briefly in the three or four days following Ms Bhutto’s assassination. To return to what was said earlier in this brief survey, it is this kind of eruption that happened, on a massively extended scale, in 1947. However, there was, at that time, a competent governmental mechanism and outstanding political leadership that could, bit by bit, restore civic order. At least the first of these is demonstrably missing today. Worse, there is the additional — and deadly — challenge of the armed men in the mountains, who have already swooped down into the valleys and are threatening our fertile plains.

The writer is a marketing consultant based in Karachi. He is also a poet