The have-nots, know-nots and left-behinds
The writer is a member of the faculty of contemporary studies at NDU, Islamabad
The paralysers of the political system in this country are good at their job. Politically empowered and sufficiently funded, these chokers of the system’s arteries clog it, making it incapable of addressing the needs of the people. In the developed world, true measure of politics is the speed and the scale with which people’s needs are addressed. In Pakistan, people’s needs are shelved and choked by a stagnant and non-delivering political system called ‘parliamentary democracy’.
Karachi is a classic example of such choking of the political system. In the developed world when a country is faced with a problem the leadership comes forward and asks the question: what strategy will work to overcome this problem? The answer to this fundamental question is found and the system gets down to work to resolve the problem. Not so in country like Pakistan.
In Pakistan the coping method of the politicians is not to solve a problem but to see how it can be twisted and turned to draw a political mileage out of it. Resultantly, almost everything in Pakistan at best gets contained but nothing ever gets resolved. The best coping method of politicians in Pakistan is ‘political blackmailing’. If politics was so principled, ethical and moral — which unfortunately it has not been, not at least for the last 12 years of consistent and uninterrupted democracy — would it need anyone to blackmail? Is it the state that politics blackmails? Should politics facilitate, ease and enable the state or should it confront it? The more frequent the employment of political means (blackmailing) the more likelihood of achieving the political end — keeping state as a reluctant enforcer.
No policy is implementable and sustainable without the public that broadly understands why it is necessary. But the public sees the world the way politicians want them to see it. The concept of responsible citizenship has to be based on allegiance to an idea and not to individuals or parties. Ideas are not snowflakes that fall from the sky. In a democracy, leaders and their type and form of politics promote and create popular and sustainable ideas. Bhutto zinda hae (Bhutto is alive) and Vote ko izzat dou (give respect to vote) are two examples of how politics self-interest guides and forces people to think collectively but unimaginatively. Whose responsibility is it to educate the people about the real nature of the world in which they live? Whose job is it to demystify politics and prevent politics from creating and exploiting confusion to serve not the national but politics self-serving political interests?
It is not the state that goes out and addresses large public gatherings to build public opinion, it is the politicians that demonise and distort public opinion by raising such questions as mujhay kion nikala (why was I removed?). The result is that politics that does not present itself for accountability murders any homogeneity of good purpose and order in society and in its place creates a weak and polarised society based on a dysfunctional social contract between the ruler and the ruled.
Money has always been part of politics. In Pakistan and the type of democracy that we have money plays a more ‘pronounced political role’. Those that have money can buy political loyalties and win elections after elections and sustain themselves in power and thus have more opportunities to make more money. This cycle is repeated again and again and the more extended the period of their rule (Sindh and Punjab) the more opportunity for them to straighten out the bureaucracy or any regulating body or mechanism that can come in their way to act as a hurdle in their money making plans. But what about the people?
Majority of people in Pakistan fall in the category of ‘have-nots’, ‘know-nots’ and ‘left-behinds’. For 73 years, Pakistan has nurtured ‘political herds’ that have deliberately kept majority of the people of this country underprivileged and deprived. Rulers have literally stampeded the people and their hopes in this country. These victims of ‘herd politics’ know little about the word dignity that comes from learning a skill, finding an employment or holding a job.
Thomas Hobbes considered as the founder of modern political philosophy said that ‘man is moral only in social context’ and to create that social context he suggested that ‘state backed by a force is needed to socialize men’. When politics fails to deliver and state backed by force does not act to address that failure then from such failures stem social and political movements that can have anti-state tendencies. Such movements then create their own political realities in which the role of the state is deeply undermined, gradually reduced and eventually abolished.
Politics has failed in Sindh. I am not saying this, the Chief Justice of Supreme Court of Pakistan said this just a couple of days back. He said, “Sindh government has failed completely… there is complete anarchy here.” He exclaimed, “Who will improve the situation here… should we ask the federal government to come and fix things?”
The planned stone-pelting drama carried out by PML-N at NAB office at Thokar Niaz Beg, Lahore and the recent press conference by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari where he suggested that President Zardari may also travel by road to appear before NAB in Rawalpindi are the extensions of ‘politics of blackmailing’ by the dying ‘political herds’ of Pakistani politics.
They have made enough money to plan, plot and engineer their own political realities. This drama has been going on for a very long while. One can only hope that State will stop acting as a ‘reluctant enforcer’ and let the process of accountability take its true course. The Chief Justice of Pakistan will also have to play his role in standing up against political blackmailing. Even before the honourable court has given any decision on federal government’s measures to rescue the people of Karachi, the PPP chairman has dubbed such likely judicial cover to federal action as similar to Supreme Court’s verdict against his grandfather who was hanged in 1979.
Offices of NAB, the Supreme Court of Pakistan, the military, intelligence services and all the law enforcement agencies represent the State of Pakistan. Collectively they must not allow themselves to be intimidated by ‘politics of blackmail’. It is my considered opinion that if Pakistan cannot put an end to this political blackmailing now (in the current government’s tenure) then such blackmailing will never end, which means continued power, privileges and opportunities for these established ‘political herds’ and nothing for those they created — ‘have-nots’, ‘know-nots’ and ‘left-behinds’.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 16th, 2020.
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