It is my pleasure to be back to these pages after more than a year as I was away due to my academic engagements that made me travel to different parts of the world. The motivation to resume writing came from some close friends and a broad range of readers who are deeply concerned about the present and the future of Pakistan- the country which is the primary identity marker for many of us who are temporarily or permanently living in diaspora. I got an opportunity to meet some Pakistani-Americans, here in the US, who are not only perturbed over the murky law and order situation in their country of origin but are seriously concerned about the survival and safety of Pakistan. Indeed, the incidence of terrorism, which has tragically taken lives of more than fifty thousand Pakistanis during the last fifteen years, has wreaked havoc on public life and space with the effect that international investors and powers, though with the exception of China, are seemingly reluctant to visit or invest in Pakistan without processing a third thought. We observed it just last week in the context of PSL final where with much effort, the international cricketers got convinced to travel and play in Pakistan. Why this is so?
There are several explanations provided by commentators and scholars in this respect. The most recent one is postulated by Raza Rumi in The Fractious Path: Pakistan’s Democratic Transition. This collection of commentaries takes a deep view of the political, social and constitutional developments that took place from 2008 to the present in Pakistan. Many observers like Rumi are optimistic given the peaceful transfer of power from the People’s Party’s government to that of PML-N. In general, the political and legal acumen of the People’s Party and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz)should be appreciated for they joined hands to correct the 1973 Constitution by repealing (58)2(b) that was (re)introduced by General Pervez Musharraf. The 18thAmendment, legislated in 2010, provided a reformist mechanism to the federal and provincial elite to effect meaningful change in the political and socioeconomic lives of the masses. It is unfortunate that the political parties in Pakistan have struggled to generate elite consensus over democratic decentralization and retributive justice.
There are serious issues facing the Pakistani society and the state. Though Pakistan’s military under General Kiani termed “internal threat” as the main enemy of the country, and certain terrorist organisations were targeted from 2008-present, the monster of extremism and terrorism, as a subjective construct and objective fact, is still there to frighten us socioeconomically, strategically and psychologically.
However, every problem, as they say, has its solution. Rumi, among others, has offered solutions in terms of governance reforms and democratic institutionalism. Not only this, the emphasis on institutional and financial decentralization is quite persuasive. The irony, however, is that our past and the present government has struggled with the implementation of, for instance, the Eighteenth Amendment. Being an educationist, it is heartrending to observe the idea of provincial Higher Education Commissions is still to be realized. Similarly, powers to the local bodies are not shifted in letter and spirit (more on this in coming weeks). Thus, in the absence of democratic institutionalization, it is almost impossible to mention non-fractious development in educational institutions, civil bureaucracy and scores of other civic organizations.
The situation is little different with respect to the ontology of Pakistan’s foreign policy. There is no doubt the policy makers keep the national interest in mind at the higher level of choice selection, the (dis)course on the county’s foreign policy is epistemologically chronic and competing. Pakistan is still not clear, ideationally, on the country’s relations with, for example, Bangladesh. I have been to Dhaka to attend some seminars some years ago and, to my understanding, the Bangladeshis, though collectively charged with super-nationalism, are open to talk with a Pakistani on a whole range of issues. In a South Asia which is under the grip of economic globalization, it is but in the interest of Pakistan to engage each (neighboring) state in an innovative manner and pluralistic approach.
As regards the future trajectory of political and democratic scenarios, there are hard questions to be addressed. Will Pakistan turn into a Republic with a functional democratic system, a hybrid system where the military would have a stake in governance or would it keep vacillating between authoritarianism and controlled democratic dispensations? These are tough questions and quite central to the rocky path Pakistan has treaded so far. An objective inquiry of such and similar questions has become an unavoidable necessity without which our future, as a society and the state, will be marred with uncertainties.
The writer is a political scientist by training and professor by profession. He is DAAD, FDDI and Fulbright Fellow. Currently, he is a visiting scholar at Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley. He tweets @ejazbhatty