Trumps among us

Change came to the United States without a dharna or a lockdown of Washington DC. Is there a lesson lurking somewhere in the shadows?

The obvious one may insult our intelligence but the deeper one will test it. By winning the election against all predictable odds, Donald Trump has upended conventional electoral wisdom of the oldest democracy in the world. In a classic wrestling move — which he clearly knows a thing or two about — Trump has used the momentum of the system to swing it against its own body weight and slam an outcome out of it.

He succeeded in doing so because the system allowed him to do so. This system funnelled the anger and disenchantment of a large section of the electorate through a transparent mechanism and into the ballot box. Change ran like an electric current through electoral copper wires and plugged itself into the White House circuit board.

Upheavals are a natural part of political and social evolution. It is how they happen and what form they ultimately take is what constitutes real difference. Many commentators agree Trump’s victory is nothing less than a revolution without bloodshed. The lesson: if you have a well-oiled democratic system it carries within it enough flexibility and elasticity to bend to the will of change without actually breaking apart at the seams.



Which brings us to the brittle system in place here at home; a system that perpetuates the rule of the elite while continuing to reinforce its exclusionary nature. Sure we have electoral democracy with all its trappings; we have institutions that form the superstructure of a democratic state; and yes absolutely we have a system of checks and balance — crude as it may be — that makes our system far more representative than the suffocating monarchies and autocracies of most of the Muslim counties. And yet we are far from that place where this hard system of ours can absorb genuine change and without rupturing its arteries.

An outsider like Trump will find it impossible to win in a type of system that governs us. The reason is not hard to fathom: our parliamentary democracy extracts its basic legitimacy from the ballot box but the sanctity of the ballot box itself remains shaky. Despite claims to the contrary by the Election Commission and despite the Supreme Court’s rejection of PTI’s rigging allegations, most Pakistanis know that tampering is a fact.

As is pre-ballot manipulation that directly affect the outcome of elections. Subtle and crude pressures are complemented by use of state resources as well as the pulls and pushes of clans, tribes and biradris. This thickly woven net of kinship successfully filters out all outsiders harbouring dreams of idealistic change.

Test this prognosis against the uncurious case of Imran Khan. He had the message and he had the appeal. The electorate was ready — perhaps even eager — for a change away from the Sharifs and the Bhuttos and their assorted ilk. But then something somewhere went horribly wrong for Khan.

In fact, it was not his fault but that of the system. Khan went up against two heavy odds: first, he equated (perhaps correctly) the system with its beneficiaries and lumped them both under the title of ‘status quo’. But while the beneficiaries of the system like Sharifs, Bhuttos et al were relatively easy targets for Khan because of the contrast he could conveniently draw between him and them, the system itself was a much harder target.

Yes it was a harder target because while Khan offered himself as an alternative to the traditional politicians, he did not have a system that could offer an alternative to the present status quo ridden one. And so it transpired that Khan tried his level best to introduce change despite the system — and failed. The day that he decided to rope in the so-called ‘electables’ into his party is the day that he compromised with the system.

Khan now wanted to smash the status quo beneficiaries of the system without smashing the status quo system itself. Perhaps he wanted to smash this system but then he did not realize that the electoral system — howsoever flawed — is blessed with a certain level of legitimacy. If an alternative has to be proposed it should have a higher credibility quotient than the one in vogue.

This subtle point was missed by Khan and his merry men and women. By resorting to dharnas, lockdowns and marches while constantly referring to the ‘Umpire’s raised finger’ Khan appeared to be offering a path to change that was at a lower rung of the evolutionary political ladder. If real change had to come, Khan should have realized, it would need this present electoral system to be improved, not smashed.

Trump was not hostage to electables. Heck he’s not one himself either. But he fought and won through a system far more perfect than ours; a system devised more than two centuries ago and gradually improved with time. He won through a system in which very little that stands between the candidate’s message and the electorate — a system that does not filter the candidate and his message through a thick net of tribal and clan loyalties. Trump won through a system that allows an outsider to catapult himself over procedures and processes and appeal directly to the voters instead of going via the convoluted and often compromised route of the constituencies.



Had Khan not been hostage to this system, he would no doubt have been the leader of this country. And he would have won with his original team of Arif Alvi, Fauzia Kasuri etc. because they carried his message in its purest un-distilled form. Khan would have had no need to compromise with the electables and dilute his message as well as his credibility.

As we prepare for the elections of 2018 we may want to keep in mind that tweaking with electoral practices and calling them reform would be extremely unfortunate. True reform that can enable this constituency-laden system to transform into one that can reflect, manifest and execute change will entail a structural transformation. But in a strange twist, such a transformation can only be brought about through the existing system itself i.e. via the parliament which itself is populated with the beneficiaries of the existing inadequate system.

Difficult? Yes. Impossible? No. We may yet find our Trumps who are bigoted in their love for this country; who are xenophobic in their hunger to educate our children; and who are extremist in their zeal to enforce merit across the land. The route is clear. The will is not.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 13^th, 2016.

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