Daily Times

So the people have finally spoken. The hurly burly is done and the battles have been lost and won in the tumult of our recently concluded electoral foray. We now look forward expectantly to the promised dawn. Supposedly this dawn shall herald our escape from the dystopian existence we have suffered so far.

A messiah is finally at hand to steer this ship out of the choppy waters of misrule, bad governance, and penury. But have all of those who have spoken been heard? Herein lies the rub. The rule of majority in our parliamentary democracy by howsoever a thin margin allows one segment of the population to be heard while the vast majority that spoke otherwise remains unheard.

Call it the shortcoming of our Westminster polity or the caprice of the gods who first make us mad before they destroy us. Our democratic bandwagon simply fails to carry the vast multitude that is electorally disenfranchised. The result is a democracy that neither empowers nor delivers.

A real democracy is what Fareed Zakaria calls a system of representative politics in which the rule of law, strong institutions, and a pluralistic ethos defines the electoral process as well as subsequent governance. A real democracy is the rule of people in accordance with an inviolable set of laws and institutions that stymie personalized decision making. Mere symbols of democracy without the right substance lead towards a system that Fareed Zakaria calls as “Illiberal Democracy”. This is a system of electoral politics where the power is not truly devolved to the people with a tiny cabal governing through a network of client-protégé links. In such a system, a large segment of public remains disenfranchised due to a lack of say in the legislature and other decision making institutions.

In an “Illiberal Democracy” institutions like the legislature, judiciary, bureaucracy, armed forces, and media suffer because of turf wars, power imbalances and non-collegial decision making. The interests of the masses are only truly served in a system in which every vote matters. The biggest shortcoming of the parliamentary democracy where a large swathe of votes cast just go waste with wafer thin victory or defeat margins breeds public discontent and continual agitation.

The two systemic flaws and institutional shortcomings in our system; disenfranchisement of a large segment of the population and an imbalance of power between the legislature, executive, and the judiciary make our polity inherently unstable and dysfunctional.

Using the armed forces to restore order and to mitigate the effects of bad governance is also recommended by Robert Kaplan in his thesis on “Hybrid Democracy”. The objective of this tour d’ horizon of republicanism was to sensitise the readers of the structural impediments to good governance in Pakistan.

Despite having the best intentions and the best team available, the structural constraints to good governance might not allow the PTI government to deliver on its electoral promises. These obstacles though insuperable to the democrats might not stand in the way of autocrats. From this one infers that pure democracy might need to be tempered with the force of autocracy to break the chains of entrenched monopolies. What are those challenges that might derail our democratic project even with this dream team of starry eyed idealists?

Despite having the best intentions and the best team available, the structural constraints to good governance might not allow the PTI government to deliver on its electoral promises

The biggest challenge is the political ethos of the political practitioners. Feudals, industrialists, and traders have piggybacked on our democracy for far too long to let go of their privileges. For such rent seekers, the rule of law and fidelity to merit is an anathema. The two main opposition parties who have been partaking of the state largesse at the expense of the masses would therefore oppose any reform that hits their privileges too hard. And if this rent seeking predilection is co-opted into the system by PTI as an expedient tactic, the whole reform project that they promise would fall apart.

The third challenge would be weaning off a large segment of the “previlegentsia”. Though they may mean well and might include technocrats of value but are too inured to their own privileges and traditional ways of working to opt for genuine revolutionary reforms that are needed to steer the country in the right direction.

Many well-meaning experts like Dr Ishrat Hussain and other traditionalists might have their prescriptions right, but what the country needs is an entirely new perspective on development and governance. Some of the experts who cut their teeth under totalitarian dispensation of Musharraf are in the vanguard of the reform agenda.

A proportional representation system that ensures that legislators are elected in proportion to all votes cast is de rigueur for genuine enfranchisement. Similarly a local government system with fiscal, taxation, municipal, and law and order responsibilities fully devolved to people’s representatives should be ensured.

To kill ethnic particularism and for administrative convenience of the governance the country needs smaller and manageable provinces. For the successful implementation of these reforms, our bureaucracy and lower judiciary needs a complete overhaul. Furthermore, taking the realities of this country into account, to implement genuine reforms, the armed forces and judiciary would have to be taken onboard.

If we fail this time to usher in the promised dawn this time, our republic, much like the ancient Roman Republic, might end up opting for a non-democratic interregnum.

The writer is a PhD scholar at NUST. E-mail rwjanj@hotmail.com

Published in Daily Times, August 16^th 2018.