LAHORE: Political parties are indispensable to the smooth functioning of democracy. They provide specific political ideology, ensuring the popular participation in the democratic process of a country. In the US, both the Democratic and Republican parties have gone a long way in strengthening the democratic institutions of that country. Likewise, the Congress party has been a unifying political force in multi-ethnic and multilingual India. It has played a pivotal role in the reconstruction of post-independence India.
Unfortunately, the efforts directed towards the initiation and continuation of any political process in Pakistan have not been all that successful. This is why political parties, just like democracy, have not been able to take firm roots in the country. It was the Muslim League, which translated the Idea of a separate homeland for the Muslims of India into a reality under the dynamic leadership of the Quaid-e-Azam. However, the party ceased to exist in its true spirit soon after the death of the Quaid in 1948. Liaquat Ali Khan, who succeeded him as the leader of the Muslim League, was killed in a tragic incident in Rawalpindi in 1951. Other great leaders of the party, like Sardar Abdur Rab Nishter, Hussain Shaheed Suharwardy, Khawaja Nazimuddin were either ignored or sidelined. In this way, the only political force of the time was deliberately eliminated from the political scene.
After the failure of the Muslim League, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the founder of the PPP, developed the mainstream national political ideology by introducing the concept of popular sovereignty and giving the nation a Constitution in 1973. Likewise, Nawaz Sharif resurrected and revived the Muslim League in the country in the 1990s by spreading its roots to all the four provinces. What happened to these two leaders and how attempts were made to wipe them off the political arena of the country, doesn’t need much elaboration.
In the absence of such a mainstream political force and ideology, now parochial, ethnic and linguistic elements in politics have begun to assert themselves. Now, we can witness nationalist-cum-separatist political parties in Balochistan, Pashtun nationalism in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Seraiki nationalism in southern Punjab. In the same manner, Sindh seems to have a rural-urban divide on the basis of Sindhi and Mohajir nationalism, respectively. All these developments have plagued Pakistan by severely eroding its authority as a state. In the presence of these parochial interests, no national goal can materialise. Now, we cannot build the Kalabagh Dam, end violence and killings in Karachi, keep peace in Balochistan, create new provinces on merit, only because these so-called nationalist and regional parties don’t desire so. In order to check further chaos or confusion, we must strengthen the federation by promoting national and mainstream political ideology.
Mohsin Raza Malik
Published in The Express Tribune, May 10th, 2013.
