LAHORE: The quality of democracy in Pakistan in the year 2017 seemed to be gradually deteriorating, as per a report in leading English daily, The News.
Democracy in Pakistan has shown a gradual decline year after year, since 2013. However, 2017 saw considerable challenges to democracy in Pakistan and as the country enters 2018, the challenges are likely to intensify for a variety of reasons, including the general election due in August 2018.
Analysing the quality of democracy, PILDAT has compiled a list of reasons that have effected the state and quality of democracy in 2017.
Pakistan is going through a tumultuous time on the democratic front, as the country is in its second democratic rule after a long dictatorship making it the longest uninterrupted period of democracy. Rising political polarisation is reaching new heights as the country enters the election year.
However, the civil-military lines are not defined and this has resulted in a weakening of democracy. Furthermore, Lethargic and slow decision-making was observed at the top executive level, as top positions could not be filled in time and major policy decisions waited indefinitely until forced to act by the events or judicial orders.
Faizabad Dharna and its aftermath have raised serious questions with grave implications for the stability of the state. The Constitution clearly defines all the rules of the game on democratic governance of the homeland. Multiple power centres, resorting to sit-ins and weakening the writ have to have an end.
A detailed analysis of the National Action Plan (NAP) and fight against terrorism proves that terrorism in the country has been curbed to an extent but terrorism incidents in 2017 show that this let-up is temporary as collectively, national, civil and military leadership failed to fix structural problems responsible for extremism and terrorism.
Futhermore, the internal democracy of political parties is already extremely weak and eroded further during 2017 as the parties experimented with genuine party elections along with succumbing to the prevailing norm of election merely for the sake of fulfilling a legal formality.
Members and top political leaders alike show little respect for legislative proceedings as attendance frequently falls way below the 25 percent mark leading to premature adjournments and even prorogation. Parliament, the provincial assemblies and their committees especially failed in undertaking effective oversight of the executive.
Judiciary appeared to have succumbed to populist pressures and street sentiments when it gave mostly unseemly observations in judicial proceedings. Serious questions on the formation of JIT and other unprecedented steps in Panama case remain unanswered. Huge backlog of cases persist and a failed system of justice continue with no reforms in sight while judiciary remains busy with high profile political cases and matters relating to executive domain.
Media & social media achieved and exacerbated new heights of political polarisation in Pakistan. Social media became a new weapon of insult and disinformation as political parties and many non-political actors deployed huge social media teams to control opinion formation. It is expected that the social media will be used to influence the upcoming elections as well.
