The art of politics
I share the general public’s concerns about corruption, bad governance and the economy not doing well.
When things don’t go the way they must, everybody in our society panics; the talking heads in the media and the commentators are the first to do so. The politicians from the opposition parties spare no time in heaping blame on the government, as if their record in power is better than that of the latter. Let us think more deeply and seriously about how best we can move forward on democratising Pakistan and settling its structural problems from the economy, the security to the troubling social attitudes that breed intolerance. There are choices that we need to explore within the existing national political consensus on the basic framework of our constitution, federalism and parliamentary democracy.
Any solution out of this consensual framework, such as a military takeover creating a hybrid political regime, would move us farther from resolving our national problems. We have taken that road about four times in the past and each time, as the dictators met their fate, we came back to the idea of democracy, but with a loss of time, unity and the constitutional framework. In my view, there is a remarkable consensus on the existing constitutional order and we owe it to the genius of the founders of this order.
The talk of revolutions without any knowledge of why and how they happened in other countries or without any deep analysis of Pakistani society, culture and its value system, is no more than empty rhetoric, or an effort to disorient the debate about how we can reform and reformulate our policies. The current challenges of economic decline, poverty and violence — which is both ethnic-political as well as religious — require political means. Politics is the only answer to these problems, but we need to understand what politics means and how it works out better than its superficial, popular conceptions. Politics is about resolving conflict, allocating resources, sharing power and building consensus among different political groups, parties and geographical regions through negotiations and bargaining.
The current assemblies, and the governments born out of them, are in their third year. A multitude of complex and tricky issues, that evaded consensus in the past, have been resolved. There are no shortcuts in politics, which involves bargaining, positioning oneself better and taking advantage of opportunities open to various political actors. This is the real deal as far as the political world is concerned; the rest is false idealism.
The cry of change in uncertain and unstable social conditions can soon become a popular refrain. But the question is, change in which areas, how and through what means and by whom? Democracy and the national political consensus means we have to work through the assemblies and the elected leadership.
I share the general public’s concerns about corruption, bad governance and the economy not doing well. But my overall reading of Pakistan’s current political, economic and social conditions is not that pessimistic. Nor would I agree with the critics of democratic regimes of Pakistan, when they say these regimes harmed the country more than military dictators. The lessons of history shouldn’t be lost to us; democracies reform, grow and get better, while dictatorships destabilise and misuse every social and political institution to stay in power. We have had enough of that.
Politics is an art, and not a science. For an art to be perfect it needs practice, self-improvement and growth within an atmosphere of openness. Politics, let alone the transitional democratic politics we have in Pakistan, is not amenable to scientific calculations and it is unlikely to yield social gains in the short term. The path of politics is determined by how the players play the game and how the society forces them to honour the rules.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 24th, 2011.
Any solution out of this consensual framework, such as a military takeover creating a hybrid political regime, would move us farther from resolving our national problems. We have taken that road about four times in the past and each time, as the dictators met their fate, we came back to the idea of democracy, but with a loss of time, unity and the constitutional framework. In my view, there is a remarkable consensus on the existing constitutional order and we owe it to the genius of the founders of this order.
The talk of revolutions without any knowledge of why and how they happened in other countries or without any deep analysis of Pakistani society, culture and its value system, is no more than empty rhetoric, or an effort to disorient the debate about how we can reform and reformulate our policies. The current challenges of economic decline, poverty and violence — which is both ethnic-political as well as religious — require political means. Politics is the only answer to these problems, but we need to understand what politics means and how it works out better than its superficial, popular conceptions. Politics is about resolving conflict, allocating resources, sharing power and building consensus among different political groups, parties and geographical regions through negotiations and bargaining.
The current assemblies, and the governments born out of them, are in their third year. A multitude of complex and tricky issues, that evaded consensus in the past, have been resolved. There are no shortcuts in politics, which involves bargaining, positioning oneself better and taking advantage of opportunities open to various political actors. This is the real deal as far as the political world is concerned; the rest is false idealism.
The cry of change in uncertain and unstable social conditions can soon become a popular refrain. But the question is, change in which areas, how and through what means and by whom? Democracy and the national political consensus means we have to work through the assemblies and the elected leadership.
I share the general public’s concerns about corruption, bad governance and the economy not doing well. But my overall reading of Pakistan’s current political, economic and social conditions is not that pessimistic. Nor would I agree with the critics of democratic regimes of Pakistan, when they say these regimes harmed the country more than military dictators. The lessons of history shouldn’t be lost to us; democracies reform, grow and get better, while dictatorships destabilise and misuse every social and political institution to stay in power. We have had enough of that.
Politics is an art, and not a science. For an art to be perfect it needs practice, self-improvement and growth within an atmosphere of openness. Politics, let alone the transitional democratic politics we have in Pakistan, is not amenable to scientific calculations and it is unlikely to yield social gains in the short term. The path of politics is determined by how the players play the game and how the society forces them to honour the rules.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 24th, 2011.