Daily Times

As Pakistan heads towards another election cycle, it has become clear that there are certain powers in Pakistan who would like to see ‘controlled democracy’, or as Ayub Khan and his coterie were given to saying, a democracy suited to the genius of the people. As was the case in the 1950s when the original Pakistan Muslim League was systematically destroyed by the deep state and a Republican Party was conjured up to replace it, the powers that be are heavily invested in depriving the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of a second consecutive term in office. The idea is to have a weak civilian government that is forever at the mercy of political manoeuvring with shots being called elsewhere.

This has long been Pakistan’s dilemma. While civilians have debated since the inception of the country whether there should be a presidential form of government or parliamentary form of government, they have failed to realise that neither of these forms of government would work in Pakistan so long as we do not deal with a basic contradiction, which is that unelected institutions in the country are unwilling to cede the policy space to elected institutions. It means that whether it is a directly elected President or whether it is a Prime Minister (PM) in the legislature, so long as it is a civilian who rules he or she will continue to face the same challenges from the entrenched institutions of the state. It is the substance not the form that matters.

The powers that be in Pakistan fear strong civilian leaders. Husain Shaheed Suhrawardy, Mujib Ur Rahman, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir and now Nawaz Sharif were all cut down to size whenever they got out of control. In 1971, this led to the loss of our Eastern Wing. But the men who call the shots never learnt their lesson. Since the founder of Pakistan, Mr Jinnah, himself was considered an exceptionally strong civilian leader with a long history as a parliamentarian in British India, the deep state made it a point to invent a more palatable founding father in an effort to balance out the narrative.

Iqbal’s ideas of Shaheen and Mard-e-Momin were borrowed from Nietzsche’s idea of Übermensch. As Nazis had exploited Nietzsche as the basis of their philosophy, our would be military rulers — especially Zia-ul Haq — seized on the idea of Mard-e-Momin as the ideal

Allama Iqbal had died in 1938. This was two years before the Lahore Resolution was even put up by the All India Muslim League. His 1930 speech was merely one of 88 schemes which had spoken of a Muslim majority region within or without the British India. Yet, by the 1960s, he was reinvented as a pivotal figure in the national pantheon, equal in stature to Jinnah himself. This was done for two reasons. First of all, Iqbalian ideas were found to be more suited to the post-hoc ideology of Pakistan than Jinnah’s liberal secularism. This ideology had not created Pakistan, but rather Pakistan had created the ideology to justify its existence as a separate entity from India. Given that the moves and counter moves between Congress and the Muslim League leading up to the transfer of power were too complicated for simple minds to understand, the state needed a narrative that was easily comprehensible. Iqbal provided the answer. Pakistan was supposed to be a utopia from where an Islamic renaissance was to be ushered in. So it became that Iqbal saw a dream and the Quaid-e-Azam brought it to fruition. There was a higher divine purpose attributed to the existence of the country. The second reason was that Iqbal’s ideas of Shaheen and Mard-e-Momin were borrowed from Nietzsche’s idea of Übermensch. Just as Nazis had exploited Nietzsche as the basis of their National Socialist philosophy, Pakistan’s would be military rulers, especially General Ziaul Haq, seized on the idea of Mard-e-Momin as the ideal.

The very idea of Mard-e-Momin is not only exclusivist — because only a Muslim can be a Mard-e-Momin — but clearly it excludes women as well. Iqbal probably did not mean it that way, but that is how it came to be appropriated. We are in perpetual need of a saviour and that saviour must come on a horse wielding a sabre. No politician is going to be good enough, other than of course an all-conquering cricketing hero who once won Pakistan the World Cup. This should help explain the emphasis on Iqbal by the PTI Chairman himself. As great as Allama Iqbal was as a poet, the Muslims in Pakistan no longer need saving and, therefore, his ideas have no relevance in modern Pakistan. We need strong elected institutions with proper checks and balances. The role of other institutions must be to work in aid of civilian power and not to undermine it. The role of the judiciary is to act as a counter-majoritarian check to ensure that democracy does not become the tyranny of the majority. Tragically, in this our judiciary has constantly failed and we must accept our failure.

The world is watching as we go to the elections. Already the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has put us on the grey list for terror financing. Tragically the day that happened, the caretaker government in complete violation of its constitutional authority decided to unban a notorious sectarian organisation and unfreeze its assets. It is also well known that certain extremist Barelvi groups have been allowed to contest elections simply to make Khatm-e-Nabuwat an election issue. Consequently even reasonable members of mainstream parties have been forced to concentrate on this religious issue with the intent to weaken PML-N with a 1000 cuts. PML-N’s own party leaders are also playing this game in response. No discussion has happened so far on election manifestos and promises. Those seem secondary to the emotive issue, which has been manufactured in a most cynical manner. Only the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has issued a detailed manifesto, which addresses all the main issues facing the country. Yet even that has not been discussed. There is no public buy-in in the policies that determine their future.

Pakistan is blessed with a geographical location that can make it the hub of Asia if we were so inclined. To do this we would need to ensure peace in the region, an economy that is more gender inclusive, a higher savings rate, universal access to banking services and a new vibrant digital economy. Are any of the parties even concerned or talking about this? We are more bothered with personal religious beliefs and private lives than the progress of our country. One can only plead with these manipulators to cry halt and realise that this country must go forward, not backwards. That can happen only if there are free and fair elections. Stop engaging in petty power plays and realise that our very country’s well-being is at stake here. We need democratic institutions instead of guardians, because 70 years is a long enough time to grow up.

The writer is a practising lawyer and a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Law School in Cambridge MA, USA. He blogs at http://globallegalforum.blogspot.com and his twitter handle is @therealylh

Published in Daily Times, July 2^nd 2018.