The writer is an academic and political analyst on Pakistan affairs, American foreign policy, international relations and economic matters. He can be reached at hl_mehdi@hotmail.com
Democratic political culture is a state of mind. An ideology conceived in several important concepts and substantive norms rooted in the established acceptance and practice of a clearly defined ‘set of rules and laws’ obligatory on all citizens and the political leadership of a country. Equality of all citizens, unequivocally of political leadership as well, is fundamental to democratic societies. But above and beyond these factors, is the absolute intellectual, philosophical, unyielding and resolute need for moral ethical development of a democratic mind. Failing moral-ethical development, a society or nation cannot progress democratically. It is this factor that lends an intellectual and spiritual source of strength to a democratic culture and its continued progress, evolution, expansion and growth. Consequently, a nation without a morally-ethically developed political leadership is doomed to multiple disappointments and failures in democratic misbehaviours.
Imagine, for a moment, if Tony Blair, a former British prime minister, had moral-ethical bearings and accorded due consideration to millions of people demonstrating in London streets against going to war in Iraq on a flimsy and fabricated lie. The 21st-century world would have been quite a different period in human history — perhaps without terrorism, human mayhem and destruction of some of the oldest human civilisations. Donald Trump would not have been elected president on a political platform of blind white supremacy, blatant militarism and threats of annihilation against weaker nations and their people. In the Netherlands, leader of the Party of Freedom, Geert Wilders, would not have been a presidential candidate in March running on a purely racist platform. In France, Marine Le Pen of the National Front would not have had such a strong showing in the May election. And so on and so forth. The absence of moral-ethical development of political leaderships around the world is visibly evident and responsible for the emerging decay in the democratic systems around the global political spectrum.
As for our beloved country, the land of the ‘pure’ and the ‘pious’, the story of moral-ethical decay of our so-called democratic leadership is written all over the wall for anyone to read. Look at this purely Pakistani phenomenon from any angle imaginable: Psycho-analytical, cultural, anthropological, aesthetical — and of course with a view towards ‘identity politics’, and one can clearly see that moral-ethical democratic norms have been totally set aside in its promotion. The stage is all set and attempts are being made to turn democracy into some kind of ‘homemade remedy’ to permanently sustain Pakistan’s specific brand of democracy — ‘identity politics’, if possible!
In order to illustrate my perspective on the said subject, I have reproduced extensive extracts from one of my previous articles written at the dawn of the so-called democratic era in Pakistan starting with the Zar-Naw Brothers specific experiment with Pakistani democracy. To begin with, it appears to be a reasonable assumption to make, given the socio-economic-political ground realities in present day Pakistan and the performance track record of nearly eight years of civilian democratic rule, that the majority of common Pakistani citizens are asking some important political questions: Does Pakistan need a ‘New Republic’ focused on the attainment of a purely ‘people’s democratic welfare state’? Has Pakistan’s sad political odyssey for democratisation been achieved? Or has its democracy been reverted backwards to the rule of ‘oligarchs’ and ‘plutocrats’?
The word ‘oligarchy’ is rooted in Greek. It is a system of government by the few. There is an implication of exploitation of public and national wealth by which the ‘oligarchs’ enrich themselves; historically many certainly did. ‘Plutocracy’ refers to the rule or power of the wealthy. It means that individual wealthy people exercise a combination of economic and political power, and consequently have overall dramatic impact on the entire shape and structural form of a society. Hence, it is obvious that ‘oligarchy’ and ‘plutocracy’ are not complimentary factors in the development of democratic institution-building.
Has the recent Pakistani democratic experience, starting in 2008, been a fearful and disappointing encounter with fate for the majority of the citizens? Indeed, common people in this country are suffering unprecedentedly and encountering socioeconomic disasters on a daily basis on a scale unimaginable in a civilised democratic society. Let us do a bit of soul searching and careful philosophical and political reflection on what has been happening to us — as a nation — at the hands of our self-proclaimed democratic leadership.
What has been a dramatic transformation in today’s Pakistan is the emerging political enlightenment of its civil society and accompanying political activism. And now another struggle falls upon the nation to challenge the growing unacceptable political excesses of the Zar-Naw Brothers’ leadership. Pakistan’s elected democracies have been disingenuous so far. Elected civilian leaderships, time and again, have chosen oligarchic and plutocratic approaches to governance (by some measures, worse than military dictatorship) instead of a determined and steadfast commitment to democratic norms.
Have we not witnessed massive corruption, unprecedented political mismanagement, fiscal disasters, incompetence, inefficiency and domestic and foreign policy crises during the elected governments’ tenures, including the incumbent government? The apologists claim that this is the immediate and transitional price that has to be paid for the survival of democracy and soon things will get better and democratic norms will prevail. But they are wrong. They are conceptually flawed, intentionally and knowingly unethical in their views. It is a deceptive perspective promoted because of vested interests.
The fact of the matter is that we live in an age of mega-expensive politics. In Pakistan, money has been allowed, by the elected leadership, to transgress from markets and business enterprises, where it belongs to politics, where it has no business. Consequently, the elected democracy has structured itself into a mega-merger of political power aimed at seeking massive financial capacity and control, hence putting political power in the hands of a selective group of ‘oligarchs’ and ‘plutocrats’.
Nearly a century ago, the US Supreme Court Justice, Lewis Brandeis, warned: “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” “It is not enough for governments to be simply democratic; they must deliver or decay,” writes Stein Ringen, the emeritus professor at Oxford University. He further states that Athens was a role model of democratic governance until “privilege, corruption and mismanagement took hold, [then] the lights went out…In Athens, democracy disintegrated when the rich grew super rich, refused to play by the [democratic] rules and undermined the established [democratic] system of government.”
The vital questions that need to be asked in today’s democratic Pakistan are: Does Pakistani democratic governance simply suffer from a moral dilemma and spiritual bankruptcy? Or has the elected democracy already gone far beyond the threshold of institutional democratic destruction? Above all, can Pakistan’s ‘democracy’ survive side by side with ‘oligarchy’ and ‘plutocracy’ factors, at least for the time being, and eventually reinvent itself? History does not seem to endorse this contention!
Published in The Express Tribune, December 22nd, 2017.
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