Keeping demagogues out of politics

Will people take to the streets for the defence of democracy? Yes. Will they take to the streets for defence of ‘our kind of democracy?’ No. Pakistani politics is these days showcasing a great political show both for the insiders and the outsiders to watch and enjoy. While the show is going on what is not being realised both by the government and opposition is that democracy is dying a slow death in Pakistan and it is dying at the very hands of our elected leaders – and nobody else. 

Badly infected, our democracy is in dire need of an antibiotic, and that antibiotic is the ruling party led by Imran Khan, and not the one led by Sharif, or the one led by Zardari for that matter. The problem with the PPP and the PML-N is that they want to remain in power indefinitely. Ideally, they should have allowed the PTI government to continue doing its job and, in the meantime, regrouped, reorganised and consolidated, leaving it to the people to decide, in 2023, who actually deserves to rule them. In the meantime, work on election reforms would have made the conduct of next elections very transparent and fair. But this is not what the propagators of democracy want in Pakistan. What then do they want? 

They want violent seizure of power. The so-called democrats led by the Maulana plan to resort to violence to seize power. If there will be a democratic breakdown of a dying democracy in Pakistan, it will not be caused by the generals but by some of these demagogues. 

Demagogues in politics are the leaders that appeal to the desires and prejudices of the ordinary and poor people. They hardly ever utilise their own rational and logical political arguments and while the world detests and despises them in our country they are loved, loathed and even preached. Can there be a litmus test of identifying these demagogues or ‘antidemocratic politicians’? 

Juan Linz, a German political scientist, concludes in his book, The Breakdown of democratic Regimes, published in 1978 that there can be a litmus test for identifying antidemocratic politicians. There are four behavioral signs that such politicians demonstrate and they include: they reject in their words or action the democratic rules of the game; they deny legitimacy of the opponents; they tolerate or encourage violence; and they demonstrate a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of the opponents. Assessed on this given framework, I leave it to the readers to decide whether we have true democrats to allow democracy to really flourish as a system of government in this country.  

Two basic democratic norms act as great check on the continuity and preservation of American democracy – tolerance and restraint. For over 200 years both parties in the US “accept each other as legitimate rivals" – that is tolerating each other. Also, while in power neither party ever tried to exercise “temporary control over the state institutions” to gain advantage over the other – that is restraint. When will we learn these basic democratic norms? Are we even willing to learn them? 

If democracy has to survive in Pakistan it has to find a way of keeping out the demagogues. They are in plenty in all political parties and the parties must do everything to prevent them from conducting mainstream politics. This will require political courage but if democracy has to survive it will have to let go of all these demagogues that are corrupting our entire political system. Political parties will have to act as our democracy’s great ‘gatekeepers’ to keep all the demagogues out. 

One big demagogue that the world witnessed was in the shape of President Trump. But America, being a powerful country, survived the civil war, the world war, the cold war, the Watergate, etc, so it could survive Trump as well. We don’t have that luxury. We have our economy in crisis, we lack political stability, we suffer from rising public discontent – and all this contributes to the dying democracy in this country. 

In their book published in 2019, How democracies die: What history reveals about our future, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt give the example of Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company and one of the richest men in the world in the early 20th century. The two authors, terming Ford an extremist demagogue, writes that he rallied against the Jews and claimed that Jewish banking interests were conspiring against America. Racists picked up his views around the world and he was mentioned with admiration by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. He was even awarded the Grand Cross of the German eagle by the Nazi government in 1938. His immense popularity lured him into politics and he flirted with the idea of running for the presidency. But more than the opinion of the people, the opinion of the party leaders mattered, and despite popular enthusiasm for his candidacy, Ford was effectively locked out of contention. The political word was “how can a man who has no training, no experience, aspire to such an office?” Party gatekeeping helped to block a demagogue from coming to power. In other places where it could not happen we saw the Hitlers, the Chavezs and the Mussolinis come to power. Even the modern day demagogues such as Narendra Modi of India and Victor Orban of Hungry are playing havoc with the lives of the people in their respective countries. Even if the leaders are popular but they are established demagogues, the political parties will have to act as the great gatekeepers of democracy to keep them away from gaining power.

If not litmus-tested, some of them can pretend to adhere to democratic norms early in their political careers but eventually they abandon all rational political thinking and resort to authoritarianism that shames the worst of the military dictators. Party gatekeeping is a system that blocks their way.

In Pakistan, the Election Commission also needs to reassert itself and perform the job of gatekeeping. Politicians whose political credentials are tainted, who have been accused of corruption, and who openly speak against the state and its institutions should have their path to elections blocked and they should have no role to play in the future of this state.