A closer look is needed
Abraham Lincoln once said that Government is of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. The people must be properly educated to understand these dynamics of governance. They should control their emotions and inner feelings to reserve it. A respect of the Government formed by majority of people, led by their elected representatives, and which delivers virtues for the people shall not be perished anywhere in any country. Democratic governments are formed along these lines.
Let’s respect the choice of the majority and control our emotions in letting down an elected government. An elected government is not forever. It is formed for 4/5 years and then it again seeks people’s mandate. If mandate is not respected for one or the other reason and disturbances are created on streets and roads by closing them out for commuters, a dictatorship might emerge of minority against the principles laid down by Abraham Lincoln in the 19th century.
No government has been rooted out in the United States because minority disowned certain policies. People simply do not elect them in the next elections if they deemed so. Policies can be changed but with a majority voice in a democratic manner.
Looking at the established principles of governance in the developed democracies, Pakistani politicians and their followers lack such a political education. They want results in just one go because they are out in the streets and their leaders (some even called them Shahinshah – emperor) have asked them to do so. They are not interested in a majority vote but with their street power they want to bring a fundamental change no matter how the majority looks at it and react to it.
A new, street power-based neo- liberalism is on the rise and it might disturb the already weak function of a democratically elected government. Some gestures are even posted on the rise of the “finger of an undeclared umpire”. People fully understand that who is an “umpire” and how it could harm the already fragile democratic governance in the country.
Country’s legal and constitutional system to preserve the credentials of an elected governance are fairly pathetic and inadequate compared to the role of the “umpire” and hence the ‘umpire” is always exclaimed to mediate instead for waiting for the term of the elections.
Pakistan has been confronting with this new sort of neo-liberalism. It is blended with loose talk/language, doubtful credentials, u-turns on important decisions, broken promises, attacks and counter-attacks, and any kind of filthy tactics and muddy postures against the established moral values and political norms of democracy.
The dharnas and lockdown politics and immoral allegations have changed the domestic politics to a large extent and such voices are even raised in the parliament. One likes or does not but this type of neo-liberalism is in the making and the country might in the grip of the fifth martial law.
Muddy politics has become the norms of the day in the last many years. The respect of the corridors of the apex court, which decides the fundamental constitutional dispute between the two claimants, no longer exits. If this respect has gone, Pakistan fully qualifies to become a “lawless State” where decisions are made on the streets and institutions become inoperable in delivering anything.
Where trust on the law enforcement agencies was made controversial and they are attacked by mob and pushed back by them, people’s governance can no longer be sustained and “for the people” no longer exits. The law enforcement situation has become unworkable because the mob possess sophisticated weapons and so much so the tear gas, whose license was only issued to law enforcement agencies and not to the demonstrators and non-State actors.
Let’s not perish the government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Instead of going back to the “umpire’ (definitely not citing to cricket match but politics), let’s ask the people for the mandate and the change of the government. Liberty does not go beyond one’s nose. The respect of the liberty of the other man is equally important.
Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher, said that “people demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought, which they seldom use.” If we values freedom, we must value the same for other people. We need to avoid totalitarianism in politics to say that we the only wisdom to make decisions. It should be shared across all segments of society and even beyond – the international community. We have to enhance the freedom of others instead of snatching their freedom or becoming a cause to an unrepresentative totalitarian system and to lose a government formed of, by, and for the people.
