Misdiagnosing the problem

Liberty, freedom and cooperation are universal values which people anywhere in the world would embrace if given a chance. I even call them sacred concepts and when you profess about these sacred concepts in the universities your only motivation and sense of purpose is for this brand of generation Z students not to lose hope or lose their way. Students become more conscious in troubled times and relate more to who they are not and who they cannot be rather than who they are and who they can be.

Surely, we are a democracy because democracy seems to be the best model to organise any society as apparent in the huge socio-economic and political success of modern democracies in the world. But would we ever be a modern democracy or can we ever become a modern democracy in the way we are treating it? What our country needed was not just democracy but some bold and sweeping visionaries, minds that could see beyond the fog of these lost years. The strange thing about our country is that while the developed world is famous because of the scientists, scholars, academicians, intellectuals, doctors and professors, ours is famously dominated by the recognition seeking media-persons such as programme hosts, YouTubers and social media influencers.

Some of them are doing good job but most are striving endlessly to be recognised as unmatchable and nonparallel superiors. Had we not considered history only as a study of past events but considered it in the Hegelian sense of ‘development and modernization’ we would have done something by now to fix this problem. No doubt most of these media-persons have monumental struggles to show for their commitment and hardwork; but in the development and modernisation of politics, a subject that most of them consider they have mastered, their contribution is negligible. Democracy in this country has hardly taken any worthwhile strides but when one looks at the careers of the media-persons in this country one is amazed looking at some of the success stories.

Ideally, men in democracy obey no masters but themselves and ideally men in media must also not obey no masters but themselves. Unfortunately, in Pakistan both democracy and most media-persons are in conflict with politics but both love and desire the valuable human creation that has turned into man’s master and lord — capital. How else could a candidate for Karachi mayor with lesser votes defeat the candidate with more votes? Some thirty voters of the defeated candidate failed to appear or as alleged by the losing candidate prevented to appear and cast their votes. Democracy was already backsliding in the country so to witness one more event where authoritarianism choked democracy to death was not a surprise. However, before the funeral prayers for the death of democracy in Karachi could be offered, the people were obliged to hear the ‘controlled analyses’ of some of the famous media-persons on the issue.

One could quote many pearls of wisdom that were showered on the people but I will quote only one to re-emphasise the thesis of the Founder of our Nation: “The nation and the press rise and fall together.” Maybe he would have used the word media instead of the press if he knew the revolution that information age would bring. So, there is this famous anchor person spoon-feeding the president of the losing party and suggesting to him that if he had considered allying with PPP then at least he would have managed to bag the seat of deputy mayor of Karachi. This was classic media ‘mirror imaging’ — a concept that necessitates that the patterns of the past are repeated in the present. Whenever something goes wrong in Pakistani politics and its democracy suffers it is these media-persons who misdiagnose the problem.

Their misdiagnosis is understandable because we were in a master and a slave relationship when we were colonised and we are still not sovereign and that reflects in how our national media builds up the narratives and creates its own reality circumventing the actual reality on ground. But before I forget, the reply of the president of the losing party to this famous anchor-person was very interesting. He said, “You are conveniently forgetting that if our people were allowed to vote we would not only have bagged the mayorship of the city of Karachi but also the deputy mayorship.”

The inference that one may draw from this (non)democratic event in Karachi in which once again democracy nose-dived into the feet of the political masters who control it is simple. On the political canvas in Pakistan the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism is quite similar to the struggle between mediocrity and meritocracy on Pakistani media. Our ballot boxes may go empty when people may be prevented to vote or they may be stuffed to the top. But all these stuffed ballot papers are similar in how our national media is devoid of meritocracy and filled with mediocrity that willingly misdiagnose problems.

One can misdiagnose the problem only when one misunderstands the problem. Countries are not run by misunderstanding the problems, but by understanding them and seeking their best solution. However, when problems are misunderstood, misdiagnosed and mishandled then they no more remain problems they become contradictions. The easy definition of any contradiction is a serious problem which cannot be solved within the given system. When the system stops offering the solution to a contradiction, it loses its legitimacy. The current political system in Pakistan, the way it is being run and the resultant democracy, has lost its legitimacy and the credibility that come with it.

In over seven decades of independence, we could not understand that democracy would only flourish under the constitutionally supported mechanisms of checks and balances and by ensuring that power must be blocked from being concentrated in a single hand. Not the people’s power but the power of political masters matter and that unfortunately is leading democracy in this country to its sad end.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 18^th, 2023.

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