Daily Times

The history of Pakistan’s by-elections have rarely assumed as much importance as the by-election of NA-120. The seat was vacated by the former Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s five-member bench verdict on the Panama leaks. However, his disqualification was done on the grounds of not declaring the salary which he did not receive. Thus, the verdict and result of NA-120 is another addition to the benchmarks of Pakistan’s treacherous political history and vantage point of analysis for predicting shape, tone and tenor of ensuing political events.

The result of NA-120 will probably be a barometer for democratic and anti-democratic forces. The result might have boosted the morale of the ruling but beleaguered PML-N but it can also create panic in the ranks of opposite camps to think about the crude methods of upsetting Punjab’s new found cause of civilian supremacy through sanctity of the ballot paper. For the first time, workers and voters of a political party ruling the center as well as Punjab faced crude tactics on polling day from powers that no one has the courage to name. In effect, the scenario paraphrased the whole saga of Pakistani parliamentary system and civilian supremacy. This is proof that the sovereign powers of the state are lying elsewhere, and until the people locate them they cannot fix responsibility and accountability for the political, economic and social decay the country is heading towards.

Punjab has a rare opportunity of promoting national integration by accomodating competing regional interests

However, there is a ray of hope as PML-N workers in Punjab showed a marked resolve and commitment to the cause of democracy and civilian supremacy in the face of all odds. It is a good indication that Punjab is steering towards becoming a strong political leadership that espouses the cause of democracy and civilian preponderance rather than a civil-military bastion.

By finding a leader in Nawaz Sharif and leading the democratic project, Punjab has a rare opportunity of national integration through democracy to accommodate competing regional interests that can ultimately blunt the ethno-linguistic divide. Moreover, it will be able to falsify Zia’s notion of unity through uniformity that justified the political use of religion, one of the nightmares faced by the country and its people.

So far, one of the complaints repeated by the democratic forces in smaller provinces against Punjab is either its apolitical attitude or inclination to side with anti-democratic forces suppressing the voices of democratic forces through its numerical majority.

In the 1980s, the voices of democratic forces in interior Sindh could not reach the plains of Punjab and were easily suppressed by incriminating them as miscreants and robbers.

Another glaring example of sacrifice by the people of smaller provinces is that it is off the radar of our national memories is the struggle of the Pakhtun of Balochistan. Dejected by the deepening silence against the Zia dictatorship and absence of solidarity with the democratic struggle of rural Sindhi, on October 7 1983, Mahmood Khan Achakzai, chairman of Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, gave a call for a peaceful march with the only slogan of ‘long live democracy’ that was ruthlessly crushed by the martial law authorities by killing and injuring several workers. Achakzai narrowly escaped amid direct firing. That was one of Achakzai’s sins never forgiven by anti-democratic forces. For about seven years he remained underground due to threats to his life. The workers of PkMAP were subjected to a vicious witch hunt, in which they were forcefully taken to the Jamia Masjid in Zhob and forced to recite the Kalma to renew their faith as the mullah declared them apostates by talking about democracy and opposing the so-called Afghan Jihad. Additionally, the mullah declared their marriages null and void and called their in-laws to pressurize their son-in laws to either leave PkMAP and renew their faith or divorce their wives. This is the democratic struggle of those was turned into a stratagem to rally support for the Afghan jihad. As those workers stand exonerated of their ‘apostasy’, the country remains deeply mired by the same Afghan jihad policy.

But today, those political workers support their counterparts in Punjab struggling for the cause of democracy. When a non-Punjabi political worker finds out about the political struggle of workers in Punjab; some who have gone missing a day before the elections and others who have been subjected to baseless charges of blasphemy for raising voice in favour of civilian supremacy and democracy, a common cause is automatically established. This confluence of ideology that struggles for the larger cause of democracy can ensure plurality and diversity and can provide constitutional guarantee for their cultural, political and economic rights providing an impetus for national integration exceeding the ethnic and linguistic divide. The struggle, without a doubt is a worthy cause. Now that Punjab is facing the brunt of forces controlling democracy, the possibility of representative democracy is not too elusive.

The writer is a political analyst hailing from Swat. Tweets @MirSwat

Published in Daily Times, September 20^th 2017.