Another milestone for democracy?
If mere elections make democracy, then it would be hard to disagree with a gleeful Shahbaz Sharif that democracy came full circle yesterday. Yet too much went into the Senate election to judge it merely on outcome. And arguments about horse-trading, etc, will dog the Upper House for some time to come. With the media becoming increasingly proactive, tales of intrigue including subtle political persuasion and blatant vote-buying have also come to the fore, speaking volumes about the kind of depths some of our elected leaders are prepared to go to in order to ‘serve and protect democracy’.
But it’s not easy to disagree with Khurshid Shah either, especially about the late night presidential ordinance that eventually called off the Fata vote. Why in the thick of the night? Why not in advance, especially since the problem has been debated since ’02, and the N-league was willing to bend over backwards to check the kind of practices the ordinance apparently checked. Won’t Fata members be more sceptical of the government now, as Shah questioned, tilting towards other choices whenever they get to vote? And why was the prime minister out of the country on such an important day? If Shahbaz could make it back in time after official engagements in Riyadh, couldn’t Nawaz also pray for Pakistan’s prosperity from Islamabad instead of the holy land this time?
Now attention, and intrigue, will shift to the appointment of the chairman and deputy chairman. And if pre-vote manoeuvring betrayed the political elite’s obsession with claiming the Senate accurately, a lot more lunches and dinners are in the offing. There were all sorts of reports, ranging from cajoling disgruntled groups of certain parties to startling greasing of palms, going into the election. It seems the rush for the Upper House brought out the worst in our politicians. When party leaders cannot trust their own rank and file, and ‘horse-trading’ becomes synonymous with the Senate, there is not much to write home about in the long road to democratic supremacy. But when society is regressing as a whole, perhaps it would be asking too much to expect elections, whether to the upper or lower house, to be any different.
