Once voted back into power, experts thought Mian Nawaz Sharif with his decades of experience would emerge as a different politician: focused, mature and prepared for institutional reforms the country so badly needs. That he would, at least, this time rely upon people empowering them at the grassroots level not only to protect himself but also the democratic process from being derailed.
But the direction of the current government tells us a different story. Examine it yourself: after three years of its formation, the federal cabinet still looks incomplete, immature and incompetent. Can we justify one person to be both the minister of power and electricity and the minister of defence? What is the role of Shehbaz Sharif in federal power projects? Who is the foreign minster of Pakistan? Sartaj Aziz, Tariq Fatimi or Mian Nawaz Sharif himself? It is suspected that after the sit-in of 2014, the leader of the house has contracted that ministry out to the military, and now stays unconcerned with its business. Who holds the office of law ministry? Is he the controversial aide of General Pervez Musharraf who helped the former chief of army staff to impose an emergency/martial law in 2007?
It confirms the confusion and paranoia at the top level. Boundaries are kept ill defined, the authority of each department stifled. No one knows, including cabinet members, who is who in the government. Hence, the power that was supposed to have trickled down to masses does not transcend beyond the close associates, some family members, and a few blue-eyed bureaucrats, the grand total of which does not cross the double digits, but regardless of their number they have the ear of the prime minister, his unequivocal attention.
Cocooned by these associates, the prime minister (PM) is also inaccessible to his own party members, a fact well recognised in Islamabad. It does not matter how hard these people try and how hard they protest, they just cannot break the barrier to meet their leader or talk to him in person. What to say about the PM, these members who have spent millions to win a seat in the National Assembly cannot even get hold of the members of the cabinet. They apparently represent the ruling party. Ordinary folks from their constituencies come with high hopes, believing that their concerns would be addressed. But most of these local politicians can’t provide their voters any help, realising that within the government they are kept far away from real power, away from the policies of the administration, away from the decision making process and away from the vision of 2018 elections. Their dissatisfaction is alarming, yet ignored. If you remember, this is the same old routine of Sharif that once caused him to become one of the most unpopular national leaders of the country within two years after a landslide victory leading up to his imprisonment and eventually exile.
No, by bringing this up I don’t want to portray Sharif as an evil deity bent upon to destroy the country, or as the most corrupt politician of South Asia, causing millions of people to die of hunger, stay ignorant or suffer disease and illness. I also don’t want to tell you how our country would have dominated the West had he not been elected three times. On the record, I must say that Sharif should not be removed from the office through public agitation or illegal means before the completion of his term. In fact, we should discourage any form of protest that endangers the continuation of the democratic process. The current assembly should finish its tenure while Pakistanis get another chance to choose their rulers once again in 2018.
Having said that, the continuation of democracy does not mean that people keep on electing federal and provincial governments every five years without ever feeling empowered themselves. What is the point of the whole exercise if they have to remain an outsider? By doing that we prepare a perfect recipe to keep the system unstable, lopsided with too much power confined in too few a hands with no fear of accountability, except that they have to ask for their votes again at the end of the term.
Is there a way to make the system stable? Sure there is; however, in order to do that we have to look at the democratic process in two dimensions not one: vertical and horizontal. By horizontal, I mean its continuation as an uninterrupted event scheduled to happen every five years. But by vertical axis I refer to the power that needs to be diluted to the lowest level instead of being concentrated at the top, shared with people across the nation. How do we do that? Through the local bodies and municipalities, of course. It has been eight years that people are longing for it. Elections took place only when the judges intervened, and every argument to delay them further was rejected by the apex court. And now months have passed but the cities have yet to see their mayors in action. They are not sworn in, and their right to rule is held back from them, an act of usurpation of power which, in my opinion, is much worse than the embezzled dollar amount that has been mentioned in the Panama leaks.
The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at [email protected]