Daily Times

Pakistan is in the grip of a system of spoils controlled by those who want to benefit form a governance anarchy. When Pakistan crafted its constitution under a democratic revolution after long tussle between the praetorianism and democracy in 1973 the demons of the colonial legacy could not be exorcised. The constitution still carried vestiges of 1935 Act bequeathed by a colonial power that wanted to rule by dividing the colonized subjects. Little thought was given by the framers of the constitution to the socio-economic realities and cultural milieu rooted in centuries of mal-governance in sub-continent.

Westminster polity was adopted as a panacea to our political woes. A weary nation having experienced a flawed pre 1958 parliamentary system and a post 1958 authoritarianism masquerading as presidential rule, had little patience to debate the lineaments of new constitution. The British parliamentary system worked well in Britain due to an unwritten constitution rooted in liberal traditions adopted voluntarily by an educated population. Another reason was the consensus amongst the population about the ethical and legal boundaries to be respected by all irrespective of the social status. A democracy as practiced in the advanced Western democracies is a system of governance where the governments and people have entered willingly in a social contract and therefore comply with its norms and rules voluntarily.

The success and failure of a democracy depends upon the quality of participants i.e people. Democracy is a system of governance that operates through consensus. Now imagine if the majority of the voters are illiterate and poor with very little civic sense; what would they agree at? Or else, if a majority of the voters do not have a developed sense of public morality on issues such as graft, jobbery, nepotism, and corruption, what would their consensus be? Since a system of governance depends on democratic principles of consensus and engagement any attempts at forcing people to conform to higher ideals of public morality would entail state coercion. A democratic dispensation in Pakistan therefore would always be constrained in its ability to force compliance with universal principles of public morality and civic sense.

By hammering on a narrative of anti corruption the public expectations had been raised to a feverish pitch by PTI during election campaign without realizing that Pakistan was a not a democracy in the real sense of the word but an anocracy i.e a flawed democracy. In such democracies the lack of public and elite consensus on anti-corruption and best governance practices in the world leads to a disconnect between the leaders and the led. In simple words if the people value corruption the leaders would be hard put to teach them the virtues of honesty. The question then arises about the functioning of the state. How would a state function if it refuses to enforce standards of civic behaviour and legal conduct that ensure peace, order and development in a society. The answer lies in either muddling along as a soft state that cannot even ban a shopping bag. Either open institutionalized avenues of corruption for all stake holders or chart a radical course through hard reforms that bite all the beneficiaries of the old system.

Consider for instance the current political dispensation that has a leadership ostensibly wedded to a radical agenda of reforms aimed at banning corruption and enforcing high standards of social, political, and economic conduct. PTI government led by a charismatic idealist Imran Khan has come in power on the promises of eradicating jobbery, nepotism, corruption, and inequality from society. What it encounters is a population without consensus on all of the above objectives. There is a vast rural population whose preoccupation with daily grind of earning two square meals prevents it from aspiring for a greater vision other than keeping the present standard of living intact. There is the urban bourgeoisie that is too preoccupied with its quest for more and more profits. There is a state bureaucracy that is too preoccupied with its perks and privileges, much of those dependent upon corruption that exacts rents for government functionaries who regard this arrangement as a just recompense for their low pays and hard labour.

The powers that have embarked upon reforming the unreformable in Pakistan need to realize their limitations and expected resistance in their endeavor. One option is to plough on with reforms, undeterred by the cacophony of noises from entrenched interests and affected lobbies

Now if one is clear about the morality profile of our population it becomes evident why Imran Khan is facing a slew of oppositionists in his attempts to reform the unreformable. For far too long due to short term political thinking of dictators and pettifogging democrats the country had developed a system of governance where political and business elites extracted rents from the state in collusion with the bureaucracy. It was a system in which there was something for everybody who mattered in the political, business, and bureaucratic elite except the hapless people. The people were fobbed off through placebos and promises and corrupted through a system of managed anarchy in which nobody paid taxes and everyone could get by through greasing palms of a state functionaries. It was an ideal symbiosis of corruption and politics.

It was against such a fetid old order that Imran Khan fired the political imagination of a politically aware middle class comprising mostly the young idealists. The military played along belonging to the same class. Now when Imran started implementing his vision the threatened hordes of unreformable have gathered to foil his attempts at reforms. The traders have risen to reject a cut in their obscene untaxed incomes and there are legions of reasons they adduce in support of not paying taxes, ranging from indirect taxation by the government to lack of enabling environment for trade and commerce. The education mafia has started defying government attempts to reform the rampant profiteering in private institutions. The bureaucrats have stopped working since the reforms deprive them of an institutionalized corruption. Police does not wish to part with its powers and independence with least priority to public interest. The lawyers resist the judicial reforms since those would deprive them of pecuniary benefits institutionalized through a dysfunctional justice system.

The system of checks and balances that imposes caution on all institutions is an anathema to all entrenched interests cited above. What could a reforms oriented government such as PTI do with a slim majority in the parliament? Could a democratic government seized with a monumental reforms agenda deliver even if supported by one of the strongest state institutions i.e armed forces? The answer is yes if there is a public consensus on these reforms and a no if there is no consensus. The reality is that there is no consensus due to an illiterate and polarized population. If the consensus is absent at national level then for fundamental reforms a Singapore or Chinese model through an authoritarian dispensation is the only answer. The alternative is the current muddling through with the same polity and same problems remaining at the bottom layer of the human development index.

The powers that have embarked upon reforming the unreformable in Pakistan need to realize their limitations and expected resistance in their endeavour. One option is to plough on with reforms, undeterred by the cacophony of noises from entrenched interests and affected lobbies. A society that has a consensus on a system of spoils cannot be reformed through existing democratic practices and apparatus. A hybrid regime also creates more problems than it solves and is incapable of sustainable reforms, The alternative then, much as we might not like, is an authoritarian dispensation or the usual muddling through with the system of spoils intact for all the rent seekers.

The writer is a PhD scholar at NUST