Turning point in Pakistan’s democracy

When the American presidential election of 2016 was happening, American citizens felt the urge to vote because they were tired of seeing the Washington insiders in the corridors of power. They mainly voted for Trump because of their distaste and distrust of Hillary Clinton. In 2020, an overwhelming number of Americans voted on both sides. They voted for Biden not because he was popular, but because they were disgusted by Trump.

In democracy, business and marriage, it is important to have someone to settle for. People die for their country and religion, but someone at the helm of affairs hardly generates such emotions among followers. Let us look at Pakistan’s checkered democratic history. A sad fact that hits you right away is that those who came to power forcefully were adored perhaps more than those who came through the ballot. Almost every time a dictator came down throttling a democratically elected leader, hardly a small percentage of people were saddened. Even leaders of major political parties celebrated the arrival of generals on the scene. Benazir famously or rather infamously distributed sweets to celebrate Musharraf’s coup in 1999.

Such has been the fate of democracy in Pakistan that people voted for a select few people among the corrupt lot who always came together to the table with each other to sanitise and legalise their robberies. There really was no strong urge to stick to one leader or the other. The people went with the flow. The 90s are a testament to that. Benazir and Nawaz kept changing their seat at the throne without much fuss from the people. The Musharraf years drove the point home even further. Leaders could be churned out of thin air and then forgotten about. Do you remember the full name of that man from Balochistan who was once our Prime Minister? I’ll give you a hint: his last name was Jamali.

This time around in Pakistan, there is a man that people genuinely believe in. His presence or absence from politics matters to the people. As far as the people are concerned, he’s even more important than the party he heads. The Pakistani diaspora in various countries around the world are genuinely interested in how things will shape in their home country because having seen the justice system and other basic democratic realities in those countries, they have realised that the ballot driven system they had seen in Pakistan was one big fraud they had experienced without even realising it.

Ballot doesn’t bring democracy, but the other way around. This sentence is simple yet extremely important and can be profoundly overwhelming to understand. Let me try to clarify a little. People would brave the circumstances to vote because they feel the urge and the need to. They don’t do it because it is their right or civic duty, but because they genuinely believe that there is a greater good that can be achieved. That there is a hope. That they have a choice not among the candidates running but between choosing to play their part to bring change and refusing to do so. And that choice is the true democracy; that inclination, that hope, that drive to play the part is what comes before the ballot.

It is essential to have a leader that people can trust. With the exception of Imran Khan right now, there is no one on the political scene in Pakistan that people can genuinely feel passionate about.

In the past, people didn’t have a hope that things will get better. That has changed. With Imran Khan, people have a hope. Now people want to participate in the fate of their country. Now they feel they have an equal place in this country if Imran Khan is in charge. This is the first time that this generati is feeling this way about Pakistan. Please let’s not kill it because this would be the last time the hope of this nation would be murdered.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 8^th, 2022.

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