Daily Times

After 2008 elections, there have taken place constitutional reforms through various amendments during the proceding five-year term. In view of allegations and protests against rigging in the 2013 elections, the idea of electoral reforms caught the fancy of the politicos on both sides of the divide to promote the democracy project and empowerment of the people. This reformative interest was palpably motivated solely by the rabid political grouses of the oligarchs holding the nation’s entire politics in their avaricious grab. It was aimed at straightening up the electoral process in accordance with their mutually acceptable criteria and standards for greater satisfaction. It has nothing to do with the masses of the people, without which empowerment and real enfranchisement democracy is not even conceivable. Nor can any democracy worth the name be visualised without the uplift of the disempowered and the disenfranchised.
Democracy is said to be the best of systems so far known but real democracy is for the people. However, forces of the status quo are dressing up their interest in reforming the existing electoral system in the attire of democracy. This is a ruse as has happened so many times before: they have often played the same role over the past decades so much so that the apparel of democracy has nothing even remotely to do with it. No Einstein is needed to tell us that election contests in the country are battles in which commoners, who make up the essence and the backbone of a real democracy, only figure as bystanders, not real participants. The contest actually is a clash between the fat-bellies of this land. And as they fight with one another, they have to have grouses, complaints and grievances with the system.
What could electoral reforms really be worth if this mass scale disenfranchisement is not put paid to and a surging populace of the impoverished, the downtrodden and the enslaved is not inducted effectively in the poll process? The fact of the matter is that the bulk of the citizenry comes from the countryside where a small domineering rural aristocracy holds in its bondage human beings in countless numbers. The way out for emancipation, empowerment and enfranchisement is simply to make them the owners of the land they have been tilling generations after generations. But the oligarchs holding sway over the nation’s politics would certainly have none of it, as they are holding huge lands all over the country. Surely, they will not cut the branches of the tree they are perched on. The moot question is how to empower the disenfranchised.
Indeed, it is land reforms that miraculously empower the disempowered. But has anyone heard of voices talking of land reforms from political parties’ offices, media studios, seminars held by civil society groups, human rights watchdogs or even heard of advocacy NGOs taking out street protests and marches for land reforms? One hardly finds any prominent intellectuals writing or talking about land reforms. One of the main reasons for the dismal state of affairs in Pakistan is the remnant of feudalism, its feudal mindset and decadent culture that engender ignorance, poverty, hunger and disease. This system is also responsible for intolerance, obscurantism and repression in society. By its very nature, it is anti-democratic and negates the very concept of human rights, which are considered the hallmark of a civilised society.
Under feudalism, be it structural or a mindset, there is no concept of human rights, supremacy of parliament and rule of law. In the early 1950s, some visionaries raised their voices against injustices to the land-tillers and provincial governments attempted to rein in absentee landlords or rent collectors but they had little success in the face of strong opposition. Security of tenancy was legislated in the provinces but because of their dependent position, tenant farmers benefited only slightly. In January 1959, accepting the recommendations of a special commission on the subject, General Mohammad Ayub Khan’s government introduced land reforms. The land ceiling was fixed for irrigated landholdings at 500 acres and non-irrigated land holdings at 1,000 acres. However, the concept of the reforms was negated as the landlords were given the option to convert the excess land into farms or game reserves.
In March 1972, land reforms were announced by the Bhutto government fixing the limit at 150 and 300 acres for irrigated and un-irrigated (rain-irrigated) respectively. The reforms became meaningless when the landed aristocracy got the land transferred in the names of their friends and relatives with back dates in collusion with patwaris. In 1977, the Bhutto government further reduced the ceilings on private ownership of farmland to about 100 acres of irrigated and about 200 acres of non-irrigated land. General Ziaul Haq’s Islamisation created the Federal Sharia Court (FSC) for the first time and its aim was to review whether the law was repugnant to the injunctions of Islam. Petitions were filed by the members of the ruling elite with the Shariat Appellate Bench against the verdict of the FSC that reforms were legal.
The bench comprised of Mufti Taqi Usmani, Mufti Pir Karam Shah, Justice Afzal Zullah, Justice Nasim Hassan Shah and Justice Shafiur Rehman. Mufti Taqi Usmani wrote the lead judgment declaring that land reform legislations were repugnant to Islam. However, Justice Nasim Hassan Shah and Shafiur Rehman put up a dissenting note stating that the limit on land holdings was necessary to reform society and alleviate poverty. In 2013, the issue was revived by the Supreme Court (SC) on a petition filed by seven parties. The petitioners, led by Abid Hassan Minto of the Workers Party, sought a review of the decision, which had held the land reforms of 1972 and 1977, and the related regulations as ‘un-Islamic’ in the Qazalbash Waqf case. Interestingly, it came on an appeal after the FSC declared the land reforms as Islamic. Then CJ Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry formed the bench but still to no avail. Such is the state of our ‘empowerment’.

The writer is a freelance columnist. He can be reached at mjamil1938@hotmail.com