As the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) emerged with the largest number of seats in the national assembly there were widespread jubilations, mainly amongst the petit bourgeois youth. However the enthusiasm seems to have been somewhat muted and its echoes in society limited. It was tainted by accusations of blatant pre-poll rigging by the establishment that had come into conflict with Nawaz Sharif, on issues ranging from Sharif’s quest for improving business relations with India, the granting of contracts in the CPEC and other major projects and civilian supremacy, trying to take control on security issues, the dealings by the military with the so-called ‘good Taliban’, and the independence of the civilian government. In a controversial verdict few legal experts agree upon, the Supreme Court (SC) ultimately ousted Sharif from the prime minister ship last July.
However it’s not only due to the manipulations and intimidations of the deep state’s pre-poll rigging that the PML and other parties lost the elections. There was a genuine PTI vote bank, based on disillusioned youth suffering from the curse of unemployment and social neglect. Imran Khan’s main political rhetoric has been to ‘end corruption’ – something that he portrays as the fundamental cause of all the ills affecting Pakistan. He has used it to create hatred against his obscenely wealthy rivals within the ruling class — targeting only the Sharif clan.
And yet there is no dearth of billionaires, corrupt land grabbers and Mafiosi in his own party, the PTI. With the full involvement of the corrupt barons of the corporate media linked to the bosses of Gig economy, the media stirred a malicious campaign against the Sharif and his meteorically rising daughter Maryam. Those sections of the deep state that Nawaz Sharif had dared to defy backed his campaign with a vengeance. This discourse was also intended to push into political oblivion those seething issues tormenting the masses, from poverty to unemployment and from deprivation to lack of health care and education. It was an elections campaign sans the real issues. The reality is that with two thirds of Pakistan’s economy operating as a ‘gig’ or black economy, corruption is an indispensable ingredient of Pakistan’s economic existence; Pakistani capitalism survives and breeds on corruption. It’s the main component of the buffer that protects it from total collapse.
Although the PML-N government did largely end the traumatising power blackouts and carried out several reforms, the limitations of Pakistan’s debt-ridden capitalist economy and the rottenness of the system could not bring any significant development or prosperity for the masses. When the repression came the PML’s dynastic leadership seemed to be divided on what line of action to take. Nawaz and Maryam were using a radical rhetoric of defiance, but were very careful not to touch on the class question, as they were themselves ultimately representatives of the bourgeoisie and were unwilling to infringe their class base by raising the class contradictions.
At the same time, Nawaz’s heir and younger brother Shahbaz wanted to reach some sort of a deal with the military. Being at the helm of the party, with Nawaz and Maryam incarcerated he actually put in jeopardy the mass procession in Lahore to welcome and support of Sharif and Maryam against their conviction, which many people thought was an act of revenge for their defiance of the powers that be. Shahbaz wanted to play the ‘development’ card — something that didn’t have much appeal, since the lives of ordinary people under the shadows of the huge monuments he had built in Lahore didn’t bring them much relief from the miseries inflicted under capitalist rule. Similarly, Nawaz Sharif’s narrative of the ‘sanctity of the vote’ and ‘democracy’ didn’t fire much mass enthusiasm amongst the oppressed classes.
Although the PML-N government did largely end the traumatising power blackouts and carried out several reforms, the limitations of Pakistan’s debt-ridden capitalist economy and the rottenness of the system could not bring any significant development or prosperity for the masses
The uneven and fragile growth in the last five years brought more social discontent rather than any satisfaction or improvement in the conditions of the oppressed masses in the country. Imran Khan’s victory is analogous with the wave of right-wing populism that we are witnessing worldwide, from the electoral triumphs of Duarte in the Philippines, Donald Trump in the USA, and to a certain extent the emergence of Narendra Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey, Orban in Hungry and similar demagogues playing on the deprivations and grievances of the masses with their populist rhetoric promising development and an end to corruption. Imran Khan also whipped up support using anti-India rhetoric and Pakistani chauvinism to appeal the reactionary sentiments of the frustrated petty-bourgeois youth, the middle class and primitive sections of the population. He also combined a queer hybrid of liberalism and Islamic fundamentalist rhetoric to reach sections of these strata of society.
Now the achievement of Imran Khan’s desperate yearning to be prime minister is just days away. The PTI is a right-wing bourgeois, or rather a ‘lumpen-bourgeois’ party, with a social base in the liberal and religious petit bourgeois and a leader who has strong bonapartist tendencies, in some ways more right-wing than the current PML-N’s Nawaz-Maryam faction. His ideology is an amalgamation of contradictions; no one has yet defined what it really is.
Illusions in Imran Khan’s ‘new Pakistan’ will inevitably evaporate much sooner than most experts think. There is no room for any reforms that will improve the plight of the masses. The astrologers’ predictions so dear to Imran will fail as the excruciating material conditions of life sweep away superstition, and the socio-economic contradictions will explode, creating even greater instability and turmoil. However, the reality of Imran Khan’s ‘change’ can prove a qualitative breaking point for social consciousness.
Lenin described this controlled democracy long ago when he wrote; “Bourgeois democracy is democracy of pompous phrases, solemn words, exuberant promises and the high-sounding slogans of freedom and equality. But, in fact, it screens the non-freedom and inferiority of women, the non-freedom and inferiority of the toilers and exploited.” The masses of Pakistan have voted in this moneyed democracy so many times and yet their plight only worsened. Now a time is coming when these working classes will, in Lenin’s words, ‘vote with their feet.’ The oppressed classes shall enter the arena of history, not to change the faces or methods of governance but to challenge and overthrow this obsolete and inhuman capitalist system through a revolutionary insurrection.
The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, July 30th 2018.