Behind the mantillas of democracy

Once upon a time, in a far-off land, there was a nation which marshalled and cobbled together a state which was based on the principles of democracy, social justice, equality and liberty. They paid the price for the great rebellion with their endearing many lives.

Sadly, the dreams envisaged by them did not hatch the associated materialisations. Democracy stumbled upon dacoits in the cloaks of some fixated personalities, families, houses and bloodlines. Social justice was compromised to coveted self-interests and liberty succumbed to the loads of rule by majority and Benjamin Franklin’s hypothesis matured into a reality in our case: Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

We began with a smoldering democracy and its cold replacement by power politics. Influential people concocted like-minded and like-interests groups of people and branded these groups as political parties. To run the affairs of these political parties, the subsistence expenditures were funded by other men within these groups ushering in the systemic-culture of black politico-econometrics. The stage of political dialectics was next set up where these interest and pressure groups turned political parties were brought into structured state power.

Once in control of power, they paid back the investments incurred on these political groups done by the others both in cash and kind out of the public taxes called the public exchequer. They managed and utilised the state apparatus for promoting their agenda goals where the state machinery turned maid to these influential political groups protecting their vested interests. It was here where the social justice and principles of socio-economic equity and liberty were miserably mutilated in this system of vested interests. The hopes of good governance and socio-economic prosperity became Dickens’s Great Expectations, meant never to be fulfilled.

The rule of majority was thus branded out as a democracy. In this take, one reality was established that one who ruled Punjab, ruled the country since it provided the largest demographic group. With that provision, the rule of majority was perpetuated and the power centre slowly began to evolve around the maximum headcounts.

The situation being such, the small federating units have never been given any significance in this federation of inequalities and vested interests of few families and groups of people whose existence grew larger than life. The state tools such as media, civil society, philanthropy, etc focused on the province which was centre of all these power politics. The small federating units, especially Balochistan which had a merely negligible share in this equation of power politics, felt the heaviest burnt.

Being so lowly a sound amid the loudest of majority shrieks, the small units were never heard and biologically they seized the sense of speech and a marginal but significant radio silence prevailed in the country. The trickledown effect of monopolised politics took over the smaller federating units which too subscribed to power politics dominated by families, bloodlines and individual personality cults.

The history of political parties is only a tale of dogmatic personalities, families, houses and certain bloodlines who in the names of political parties arranged for certain groups of influential people who populated the state power vicinity. The emergence of a distinct power coveted class struck a deal of political homogeneity with each agreeing on joint and mutual protection of each other against all odds which threatened to undo the status quo.

The common people are continuously beguiled by these groups in the mazes of democracy by which they are shrouding their inconspicuous lust for power and memorialising their own interests using the grand propaganda tactic of Big Lie. There are a lot of fakes and takes behind the veil of democracy indoctrinated by these houses of democracy. Rest is only the tale of how one pressure group is replaced by the other.