Rise or fall — the role of selectorate

Political awareness of people has skyrocketed and it is not possible to politically survive with unfulfilled promises

Being skeptical and to question and doubt the promises being made by the politicians is pretty much in order in today’s world. More aware than at any other moment of our history, people have access to information that they didn’t have previously or which they were denied. Sky was the limit for the politicians that made promises in the past to sustain themselves and their politics in power but today everything has changed. The political awareness of the people has skyrocketed and it is no more possible to get away and politically survive with unfulfilled political promises.

During the course of history many experiments and changes have been tried to better and improve the lives of the people on this planet. Many ideologies took birth, various political systems were tried and tested and many isms became the very concepts that staged political struggles to bring about better changes in the lives of the people. Realism, liberalism, capitalism, communism, racism, terrorism and nationalism are some of the political ideologies that still lock horns to contest for this ever-eluding change. A popular example of one big experiment that was tried was by the Soviet Union which promised to change the lives of the people for better with the experiment of communism. That promise failed to serve the interest of the people and their lives became more miserable than happy.

In old communist Russia, where 80% of people constituted peasantry, a promise was made to the people who were told that being the descendant of Adam and Eve how the lords can be more masters and make the peasants work and produce for lords to spend. People were given hope that by challenging monarchs and feudal lords, a new communist society will be created where people will be able to live freely than ever before with freedom for all with broad equality. But eventually the experiment of communism failed and the number of communist states in the world reduced from 18 to just 5 that survive today. Communism collapsed and Soviet Union disintegrated after staying alive for over seven decades.

Historically, states that try to introduce drastic political, social and economic changes end up facing great dangers to their very existence. The experiment of communism which was tried by Soviet Union to improve the lives of the people failed; and it is in this failure that we must read the dangers that we as a state — aspiring for drastic political, economic and social reform — face. Gorbachev who came into power and tried to dismantle the Soviet political system believed that the system was reformable but despite good intentions he did not have a preconceived plan. All the political aides that he inherited from his predecessors were from a hardcore communist school of thought. It is said that it took him greater time and effort to change the balance of influence and thus he never reached a position where he could gather enough support to change the balance of power.

The fault of Gorbachev was similar to the fault of Imran Khan — he tried to introduce new concepts. They were three and not two words that he uttered in his Dec 1984 speech that became his ideological guide. Perestroika (reconstruction) and glasnost (openness and transparency) we are all very familiar with but it was the concept of uskorenie (acceleration) that actually let him down and which he started using less and less as it became clear to him that economic growth was not accelerating. Recently, on 10^th Feb to be exact, PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz told reporters after her hearing at the Islamabad High Court that Imran Khan and his party were devoid of any ideology. That is an understatement to make, as beliefs that things can get better and societies can improve is the cornerstone of any ideology and Imran Khan and his government has been consistently promising that. It is another debate whether he has been able to fulfil his promises or not but one cannot accuse him of not having an ideology. To become an ideologist the starting point is to make a correct assessment of what kind of society we live in; where we are now; and where we are heading. This clear assessment was never correctly made by his predecessors; and if nothing else, he deserves the credit for making this correct assessment.

Unfortunately, it is not the ideological component of Imran Khan’s government where there is a lacking, and much like Soviet Union’s Gorbachev it is the political and economic component where the performance of his government needs to be better. PM Imran’s economic reforms are also moving at a slow pace and these economic reforms have an unpleasant characteristic — they will continue to produce deterioration in most people’s living standards before they eventually settle down, become rewarding and make the lives of the people better.

The Opposition in Pakistan realises this and it also realises that all ideologies become vulnerable and collapse in front of realities. To obscure the achievements of Imran Khan’s government the opposition, much like the Stalin’s Soviet Union, is trying to descend an iron curtain in the society to deny the people of Pakistan from seeing through it and seeing the reality. People of this country must understand that a fall is always preceded by a period of decline. Our fortunes as a state declined during the periods of previous democratic governments and from here the choice is pretty clear — either we rise or we fall. The electorate in Pakistan were deliberately kept poor and illiterate to ensure that they cannot reason and, for the want of little favours and crumbs of bread, keep returning the corrupt politicians back to power. That has for a long time been a political component of the corrupt politician’s ideology.

At this critical juncture of the experiment that we all call tabdeeli under Imran Khan the role of military will be significant. The electorate are poor and illiterate but the ‘selectorate’ are not. Gorbachev’s ideas and ideology went down together with the Soviet Union that disintegrated into 15 republics. The selectorate has to realise that this experiment that Pakistan has started has a very slow political and economic component and despite the hue and cry of the declining political school of thought the experiment needs time to succeed, especially when there is no fallback position as all fallback positions are tested and tried and are compromised.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 13^th, 2022.

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