Status quo and change

Will ballot box bring the kind of change people desire?

Nawaz Sharif and PML(N), Imran Khan and PTI, and Altaf Hussain and MQM have all, recently, talked of the need to change the politics of Pakistan and to challenge the status quo. Imran Khan has said that a tsunami is coming that none will be able to stop, while Shahbaz Sharif has also said that if we do not change, it would then be hard to stop a revolution from occurring.

Imran Khan/PTI are building their entire party on the platform for change: they want to provide justice to all, eradicate corruption, and make Pakistan into an ‘Islamic welfare state’.

But what is interesting is that all of these parties want to bring these sweeping changes through electoral politics. Is such fundamental change even possible through just electoral politics?

Pakistan has a very entrenched political elite; extremely strong and entrenched interest groups that have a tight hold on the social, political and economic structure of the country (think military, landed elite, traders, big business, land mafias), and there is a deeply embedded patronage mechanism that backs the various elites and interest groups. Will any candidates and parties that make it through the ballot box and the electoral process a) not be a part of the elite or patronage mechanisms, b) be independent enough of these interest groups, patronage networks or elite structures to be able to argue for and implement fundamental changes, and c) be allowed to change the structure of governance, institutions and organisations in such fundamental ways without resistance from the entrenched forces of the status quo? Do we have good examples of electoral process leading to such fundamental changes in other parts of the world historically?

None of the examples of implementation of major changes that readily come to mind are of cases where it was achieved through the electoral process, especially where fundamental structural/organisational change is concerned. Most of the major changes that we have read of, from China to Europe to South America and even North America, have been through the direct power of the people. Even the recent and on-going movements/conversations in the Middle East have not been ballot box-driven.

There are a number of reasons for the above. Fundamental change requires a basic renegotiation of power and resource relationships in a society. People who have power and resources do not like giving these up. They are bound to resist and/or negotiate hard. The ballot allows only certain people to come through. Even if a lot of people with radical ideas are elected by the larger population who support change – and this is not easy and does not happen frequently – those who are already in the corridors of power, in the form of bureaucracy, military, industrialists, traders, landed elite, and any other power-holders or powerbrokers, will try their best to limit what the newly elected people will be able to do.

And since the newly elected government does need support of the traditional groups, for one issue or another, there is bound to be dilution in what the new government will be able to do. This is true for whatever the form of change that is promised. Right wing parties that promised the moon to their supporters when in opposition, had to live with a limited canvass for what they could implement. The limited canvas might still be radical enough, but compared to promises it is usually taken to be a betrayal of ideals.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto came to power with the support of a broad spectrum of people –a rare enough event in electoral politics – with a lot of promises for delivering on social, political and economic justice. But once in power we saw that he had to negotiate with the entrenched power groups, allow some of them to join his coalition, tamper his ambitions, jettison the more radical groups from his coalition. And ultimately the same elite conspired for his hanging.

Imran Khan and PTI are promising justice for all, eradication or near eradication of all corruption, an ‘Islamic welfare state’ and extension of basic rights and services (health, education) to all. Clearly, this cannot be done by just revamping the tax system, having efficiency drives, doing privatisation and/or getting undeclared assets or assets of Pakistanis in other countries back, even if that is possible. We need a very basic and fundamental renegotiation in the society and almost all major institutions, organisations, laws and ways of doing things will have to be altered if PTI wants to deliver on its promises.

The gulf between the haves and have-nots, the elite and the masses, those who are benefiting or have benefitted through illegal and sometimes legal but immoral or amoral means and those who have paid for it is too large. It requires a structural shift and redress of historical wrongs. Just to give a few examples, will PTI take back the wealth military officers and bureaucrats have accumulated, will it reverse the land-grab of the army, will it redistribute wealth made due to license raj and by not paying taxes? Will land reform be back on the agenda?

Even if PTI wins, will it have members who are committed to this larger agenda? It sounds unlikely that Shah Mehmood Qureshi and similar sounding grand family names of Pakistan will be the vanguard of a revolution. And even if they are, can basic structural changes be done by an elected government? Every move that will even come close to challenging the basic structures will be contested by entrenched power groups and the elected government will be tied down by the need to keep coalitions in place or by the structure imposed by the rules set by existing power groups.

This is not the death of hope, or an attempt to rain on any parade. It is a matter of seeing what can realistically be expected through electoral means solely. Radical change is very unlikely to take place through rules and institutions set by the powerful or those who had been in power. Usually, radical change has happened by chucking the old set of rules and those who tried to defend them, and then bringing in a new set of rules and people. But incremental change can happen, with large enough coalitions and ideological commitments, through the electoral process and through existing rules.

The current wave of popular support for change is making political parties, who are either part and parcel of the current setup (PML(N) or MQM) or who want to play by the existing rules (PTI) to promise radical change, but through the existing set of rules. This is very unlikely. What would be a realistic course of action for them is up to them to decide. But I think they will have to choose. They will either have to go to the people for direct power to alter all the basic structures of governance, or they will have to live with incremental change in case they are elected.

If parties do not do either, they will be fooling themselves and the people and this will inevitably lead to a lot of disappointment in the people post elections.

The writer is an Associate Professor of Economics at LUMS (currently on leave) and a Senior Advisor at Open Society Foundation (OSF). He can be reached at [email protected]