We were first introduced to the contentious arena of politics through the word ‘democracy’ – and more specifically ‘American style’ democracy. Vaunted for its capability of delivering a governing paradigm made for the people, of the people and by the people, it soon found its place as perhaps the most ubiquitous political model in the contemporary world, something which similar systems have failed to achieve. The supremacy of this particular model in quite evident – autocratic dictatorship is often frowned upon by the rest of the world in so far that massive invasions are funded just to prolong or engender the democratic trajectory. We are often taught that this model’s high admiration is justified on the grounds of equity. Through the process of ‘one man, one vote’, power is ultimately bequeathed into the hands of the majority who then utilize this power to elect the candidates they deem most suitable for a government post.
Even our own country Pakistan has inherited this sacred system. Despite prolonged military impediments since Independence, the country has somehow managed to safeguard this system particularly in the aftermath of the 2013 general elections where political power was transferred from one democratic party to another for the first time in nearly 66 years. Most importantly, the world does consider Pakistan as a democratic state. But can contemporary democratic paradigm in Pakistan be even classified as a democracy? Most certainly not.
There is little doubt that Pakistan’s democracy indeed fulfills its cardinal tenets like any other democracy in the world – elections are supposed to be held after every five years, parties get to contest in their respective areas and the majority winning party is thus granted the keys to government. But the true essence of democracy just doesn’t entail free and fair elections or giving the majority party power but to achieve certain goals that society demands – and democracy is just another one of many ways to achieve those objectives. Societies are ultimately pillared upon ideologies – they must eventually come to decide how to allocate scarce resources, where to spend and whom to grant a larger share of the economic pie. A failure to come up with a practical solution often leads to discontent and turmoil. Should everything be owned collectively by the State (Communism) or should free markets be ultimately responsible for running the economic system (Capitalism)? Is socio-economic inequality inevitably natural or should the State play a bigger role to curb it? These are important questions that people must reach a consensus upon.
In more advanced economies, political parties are often manipulated by ideology. Voting decisions are majorly based more upon the sort of socio-economic solutions a particular party propagates rather than just on performances in previous times. This can be corroborated over how parties such as the Democrats and the Republicans in the US to the Conservatives and Labour in the UK have constructed their party names and mottos on the sort of ideologies they propagate. And democracy ultimately grants people the power to choose between these ideologies.
However, such political developments seem to be virtually absent in Pakistan. Where democracy was supposed to offer people the choice between competing economic systems, it has veiled itself with the illusion that it could somehow deliver something better than the preceding governments. Far aloof from any political ideology, political parties of Pakistan have now become a haven for landlords and businessmen to demonstrate that they can deliver what the public needs – roads, bus schemes, water, gas or electricity thereby ignoring the macro questions of how to manage society on ideological roots. Voters hardly feel the need to inquire about their party’s election manifesto and we don’t blame them – honestly there isn’t much in those pamphlets besides the provision of basic public services or a crackdown on corruption. Pakistani politics has merely succumbed to a competition where the party that can better tend to short-term public needs gets to win the lottery ticket for holding the next government office. Managing societies is becoming increasingly complex and more needs to be accomplished to solve the macro problems rather than just focusing on the short-term micro problems.
