Having good faith in politics is not enough; it requires permanent vigilance. Law and the constitution must restrain the power of an elected government because power in countries with weak institutions can be misused

From whom must we take our country back? And who is ‘we’?

We can answer the second question without much difficulty:

‘we’ are the majority of common men and women, living on the margins of power and influence.

Most Pakistanis have hardly figured into the calculations of our ruling classes.

We, the majority, have been subjects, not citizens, of Pakistan. A citizen has inalienable fundamental rights, whereas a subject has nominal rights that can be taken away or granted selectively as long as subject populations don’t bother the rulers.

The promise of Pakistan’s creation is yet to be realised in terms of the people’s right to govern themselves through their representatives according to the law and the Constitution. There is no better evidence to support this contention than the five martial laws imposed over the course of our history - two by a single general, currently in power as an ‘elected’ president.

There is an elitist view held by members of the ruling classes - military, bureaucracy, feudal elements and their apologists - that considers our people and society undeserving of rights.

In fact when they argue that we cannot have democracy in a poor and illiterate society, it basically means they can get away with undemocratic rule and practices, and that our society is too weak to pin them down with rule of law.

Since the ruling groups are used to converting power into money and endless material benefits, they don’t accept any constitutional or legal regime above themselves.

As we have seen not once but five times in our history, law and constitution have no sanctity or supremacy over the power interests of ruling groups. They can be changed at will without any regard for the provisions of the constitution.

There is extensive empirical evidence from our own history and from other countries that have endured similar pain and humiliation that a society without law and constitutionalism functions only for the benefit of the powerful; rule of law and supremacy of the constitution would offer equal protection, rights and opportunity to all, without regard to their social position and power in the society.

Having had our constitution undermined repeatedly, our common folk have lived in virtually sub-human conditions, and generally at the mercy of powerful figures, clans and social groups in their vicinity.

Pakistanis have endured this system for more than half a century, a system that has turned many of us into cynics, believing that nothing will really change in our country. We often counter this view in everyday conversation suggesting that we should not be idealistic about social revolutions or the masses turning tables on the ruling cliques.

After decades of degradation and subjection to humiliating and unrepresentative dictatorial rule, the masses of Pakistan have finally awakened to the need for constitutional rule and a representative government.

But this awakening is much deeper in the urban middle and professional classes, with civil society, lawyers, intelligentsia and even students struggling to come out of the shadows of political parties.

The new awakening is also reflected in the political attitudes of the parties. They have buried the past and have signed declarations like the Charter of Democracy and entered into coalitions. There have been such formations in the past as well, but the difference this time around is that the coalition essentially seeks to take the country back.

What do we mean by taking the country back?

First the dictatorial rule of one man must end, no matter what the excuses.

Our history suggests that one-man rule has been disastrous. A careful look at the country will show decay in institutions, destruction of the judiciary, corruption and failure of governance at all levels. No single person, in a military uniform or civilian garb, can claim the wisdom and vision to single-handedly rule a complex and large federation like Pakistan.

All modern societies must have representative institutions under a constitution. The change we are seeing now is that our people don’t want to live under the conditions we have been forced to for the past eight years.

The second aspect of taking the country back is challenging the dictatorship by defying it openly and resisting it with peaceful and non-violent means.

No democracy or constitution rule has been delivered on a platter without a struggle.

Pakistanis must fight for its second liberation, which is from undemocratic forces and the power cliques. The ballot box offers only one instrument in this struggle. Although elections are the basic instrument in terms creating a representative government, they can be inadequate and ineffective if the constitutional and legal foundation of a country remains weak.

Therefore, besides political mobilisation and civil society activism, the struggle to take the country back would, in the final analysis, require us to have an independent judiciary and supremacy of the constitution.

This is why Pakistani civil society continues to focus on the restoration of an independent judiciary.
This also means that the new political forces likely to form governments in the centre and the provinces must remain under the watchful eyes of civil society, media and an independent judiciary. Having good faith in politics is not enough; it requires permanent vigilance. Law and the constitution must restrain the power of an elected government because power in countries with weak institutions can be misused, as it has often been, for advancing private interests.

Finally, we are still in a struggle to take the country back. It is going to be a long and bitter fight.

Nobody is really impressed by the intrigues and machinations we are hearing about, which aim to defy the popular mandate. Pakistani society appears defiant and determined and willing to make any sacrifice to gain a second independence. That is no longer an idealistic dream, but a political reality that will soon start to unfold.

Rasul Bakhsh Rais is a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Source: Naitazi

The presidential referendum in Pakistan has come and gone. As quickly as the drama enveloped the country it has been forgotten. The Pakistani nation is disappointed and fed up with the antics of the ruling classes and the referendum served only to confirm their suspicions. As expected, General Musharraf made a heap of populist promises. But sadly, till now, these promises have proven to be nothing more than meaningless rhetoric. It seemed impossible for the already dysfunctional Pakistani political culture to degenerate further. Yet this is exactly what has happened in the past two months – considerable effort will be needed to repair the damage. That said, it is important to look at global trends and draw comparisons. Despite the widespread practice of electoral democracy, there is considerable disillusion amongst citizens the world over about the responsiveness of formal politics. The recent presidential election in France is a good example of how extremist exceptions are becoming more popular in electoral polls.

More than anything else such occurrences reflect a narrowing of the political spectrum and homogenization of thought processes and ideas. In other words, ‘liberal’ market democracy has become the coveted political system of choice around the world (with Europe the exception to a certain extent). Politicians from social democratic parties espouse many of the same values that politicians from conservative parties do. In India for example, while it is the right-of-centre BJP that has unquestioningly moved toward privatization of major state-owned enterprises, it was the left-of-centre Congress government that signed loan agreements with the international financial institutions (IFIs) that set the stage for these enterprises to be privatized. All in all then, it is not surprising that extremists such as Le Pen are suddenly default beneficiaries of intense voter reaction to post-election inertia.

So maybe Pakistan’s political culture is not so dysfunctional after all. Who needs electoral democracy if it turns out to be just tokenism? The fact is that political culture cannot be judged on the elusiveness of electoral democracy. It needs to be judged on the basis of factors far more important than elections, factors that are the foundation of a robust democratic culture. A nation with a democratic culture is not necessarily one that has achieved economic democracy – no country in the world has. Similarly, a democratic culture does not necessarily mean that extremist thought and action are eliminated. Read more »

If a functional democracy that produces popular and electorally legitimate government is too much for Pakistan’s uber-smart expat and urban elite, then they had better close their eyes. They ain’t seen nothing yet. When the PPP is done with the national exchequer things will seem a lot more like 1996 than they have since 1996. That’s got nothing to do with corruption, and everything to do with a political system that is dependent on patronage and rewards its agents through a complex but indisputable spoils system. The trouble is that the naïve coffee-table class that reads and writes in the English language press is so uncontrollably narcissistic that it fails to recognise the inherent legitimacy of a spoils system in a country where there are over 40 million people below the official poverty line, and another 80 million that probably cannot afford to eat most of the food advertised in this newspaper. 

Desktop activism, and “auntie” politics has not achieved anything of note in Pakistan’s young history, yet having a desktop and being an “auntie” seem to have become qualifications to determine the fate of Pakistan’s 172 million people. This is sheer arrogance of a magnitude for which there are no words. Moreover, this is a kind of arrogance for which there is little evidence of justification. It is inexplicable why freshly minted Harvard and Cambridge graduates think they are smarter than illiterate, fifth-grade dropouts from villages across Sindh and southern Punjab. After all, it is the villagers that rule Pakistan, their representatives and leaders in the highest offices in the land. What have the expats, aunties and urbanites got? Not much, except a few YouTube clips of a washed up politician reading poetry. 

There can be no questioning the courage of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Mr Iftikhar Chaudhry. He is, and will be remembered as, among the most fearless public officials Pakistan has produced. His courage empowered and enabled not only sixty other judges to do what was right, but forced other institutions to think about their role in Pakistan’s steady slide. The military, the bureaucracy and the political elite, all have tried in varying degrees to either discredit the lawyers’ movement, or to co-opt it. This, more than anything else, should be the lens through which Pakistan’s lawyers should view their historical success. They have moved mountains on the back of the courage of one judge, and the efforts of thousands of lawyers.

No matter how genuinely spectacular this spasm of integrity was, and it was truly spectacular, the lawyers’ movement was never going to transform Pakistani politics. This is not because the judges weren’t doing the right thing. They were. This is not because the lawyers weren’t sincere. They really were. This is not because the PPP has a lot to lose by reinstating Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. It does. Read more »