The doctor’s spin on democracy

Staged and managed, as it appears to be

While images from Tahrir Square inspired the world, somewhere else in Islamabad, people pondered over an alternative to democracy. Well, that recourse does not work: a bitter lesson learned the hard way first by Turkey and then Egypt. We are still led to believe that the fourth time could be a charm. Let’s be clear on this: the only solution to democracy is more democracy, even if it looks like the present one.

Conceded this government has failed to deliver, it did inherit its fair share of problems including those of energy and terrorism. It had no say on foreign policy and the ongoing war. That said, the PPP-led coalition in the centre gave looking away a new practical direction. In times of worst economic performance, the assets of the current members of parliament nearly doubled from those in the previous parliament.

A study by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency in Islamabad, in 2010, showed that the average worth of Pakistani members of parliament was $900,000, with its richest member topping $37 million. Their fortunes have positively risen in two years while the economy has taken a nosedive.

Having been a product of ‘reconciliation’, corruption and poor performance, this setup would not have propped a different set of consequences. The National Reconciliation Ordinance was President Musharraf’s brainchild who wanted to remain in power, failing which he used it as a saving grace. The NRO legitimised corruption in the country, even making it trendy. The ripple effect of institutionalised corruption infected the entire state machinery. In spite of unprecedented activism, the common man’s faith hasn’t rekindled in the judicial system due to malpractices at the lower courts. In the last decade, many war crimes committed by our armed forces haven’t been reported. No institution in the country has remained corruption free. It is because the fish always rots from the head.

Having ushered them in, the parliamentarians are now being shown the back door. Derailing the system cannot be justified unless there is enough support for it.

We play dice with agitational politics in Pakistan; we always have. Agitation has been used to regiment the public opinion throughout our history. It has been effectively employed to justify military interventions and furnish policies. Voluntary protests or demonstrations don’t pick up fast or at all.

A case of Pakistani Anna Hazare, Mr Jehangir Akhter, is an example. He did not have the resources to buy air time on our free media nor had the foreign donors to orchestrate rallies. Subsequently, his voice against corruption was lost in the wilderness.

Mass demonstrations in our political history, invariably, have been mostly ‘staged’ and ‘packaged’. Qadri sahib’s stunt certainly lacked creativity so far as packaging is concerned. It’s the same old script of corrupt and incompetent politicians. We have heard it all before.

There is also an international push factor this time working in favour of our ‘inqilaab’, as MQM ironically called it. The Arab Spring has brought similar governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. The attitude of the West is changing towards the moderate Islamists. Ask Gaddafi or Mubarak, or Musharraf for that matter, who has wanted to ‘come back’ for a long time now; they are done investing in military dictators. However, each country has its own political milieu. The international players are aware of that. No development, however small in our political arena, bypasses our strong establishment. Our case is, to an extent, analogous to Egypt’s post-revolution scenario.

What might have been an inadvertent compromise there is being engineered here. Hence the revolutionary march. Hence the repeated references to Tahrir Square. Hence the call to consult ‘all players’.

Opinion may be divided on who is calling the shots here but there is a growing consensus against actions discrediting democracy. This is so in spite of massive campaign in the streets and on media. The people had very little interest in the return of the messiah to begin with and that interest is petering out. It explains the short time span to put the house in order.

The call for march is a Machiavellian move to hijack the elections rather than a revolutionary idea. Medical research exploring the unintended consequences of words shows that when a doctor, even though he means well, tells his patient before operating on him” it might hurt”, that cure subsequently hurts even more. The press releases by the foreign embassies and ISPR to clarify their positions is hardly consoling; in fact they stir more doubts.

On 14 July, 2012, the day of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Cairo last year, Egyptians were holding up placards that said ‘Egypt will never be Pakistan’. While we still have time, let’s say to them, loud and clear: We will never be another Egypt.