Elections: consolidative, restorative or transformative?

One can easily pin a major party to each of the above consequences as Pakistan enters its most crucial electoral exercise in the next week. It is satisfying enough that elections will be held recognising their criticality in resolving the muddle that Pakistan has been in for the last two years. It remains a fledgling and distorted democracy struggling to find roots in common and institutional thinking and how it must evolve and deliver. Those who claim democracy as their chosen preference of seeking and dispensing power are also in the process of knowing and understanding what democracy entails and what will strengthen it as the preferred choice of governance.

For a governance model as raw as that any shock or disruption reverts the entire process back to zero from where yet another effort at reinstitution begins. April 2022 was one such shock. Power elites, political and non-political, must carry the responsibility for an entirely uncalled for disruption; a few months more and the process of public remedy in democratic systems would have repaired the malady. True, there were other determinants, perhaps equally perilous, which if resorted to would have been equally disruptive. And those may have triggered the rot faster, but it remains opportunistic and less than committed and uncompromised intent in power which gives cause to apprehensions and uncertainty forcing resort to extreme measures.

April 2022 was one such consequence. Rather than quickly restore the system back on rails, patent self-interest and myopic aggrandisement ruled the roost thrusting the 240 million others to the fate which became their destiny for the next two years. The country has slid back at least twenty years in these twenty months. In a democracy if the ruling system stagnates or stalls, a curative resort and the only known remedy is the elections. These were, first, not opted for and then not held in an inordinate and inexplicable violation of the Constitution. Playing around with this prescription only deepened the malady and prolonged the pain. That should now be obvious enough.

Luckily all that is behind us, and we have come out on the other side in one piece even if battered and bruised. Elections are a week away. That instills hope. We are on the anvil of beginning another journey amidst the promise that it will lead us to better and happier destinations. When stalled, patchwork doesn’t help because it tends to only remedy what ails the moment not recommence the journey. Only a nation that keeps moving along its chosen path and is not disrupted or stalled is the one that will make destinations. The upcoming elections will help restart the journey. The quality of elections will help determine the commitment to that journey but it’s better to keep lumbering forward than be stagnated and stalled. There is still time to make the electoral process credible and less contentious by enabling all an even chance. Outlandish resort and outrageous measures will only sully and tarnish the exercise of restoring faith and hope and question the credibility of the electoral process. Somethings can wait for better times. Let the last one week before the elections bring back hope and faith in the system.

Campaign promises are hardly the stuff of policy but if an outline is explained with some detail and it makes fiscal and economic sense, and is realistic, and meshes well with how the policy in those matters already exists — Pakistan is under an IMF programme and its strictly prescriptive regimen — it must gain wider recognition and concurrence. Looking at the manifestos of the three major parties in the forthcoming elections — the PMLN, PTI and the PPP — the latter two have only outlined populist slogans as manifestos while the PMLN, quite against its character, has given it a detailed thought with defined targets in each area of economic activity. It makes for a pleasant change. Also, it identifies that the PMLN considers itself a likely follow-up to the two interim set-ups which have been at the helm since April 2022. If followed in letter and spirit the state, the society and the economy will benefit with significant returns. Even if the process of economic recovery only moves along indicated paths it will be notable progress from the existing state of regression. The journey would have restarted.

The PPP is restorative in its character given the enthusiasm in its young leadership which romanticises the past and strives to recreate the legacy. This without concern of the changing times and challenges will appear misplaced and unfruitful. Tempering the romance with realism will make PPP a formidable option. The ongoing campaign for elections and the possible results from it will bring home the need to recalibrate and reevaluate, not just restore beyond a very narrow domain of a historical political perception. Also, the party must evolve with an open mind to review and remedy the Constitution including the eighteenth amendment which she thinks she owns in exclusivity for some strange reason. Although the party is popularly believed ever ready to play ball for power it has within it enough political capital to wait and vie for a self-achieved genuine chance at it.

The PTI is in doldrums of sort minus its top two tiers of leadership. This is survival time for it and any aspiration to be transformative will neither cut cloth nor be prudent in this environment. A lot of water has flown through Indus in the last two years since it was dislodged. One, it wasn’t suave enough in its conduct of the economy, and two, it did not shed expedience and bring necessary reform for sustainable economic revival. SIFC since then has taken root and impacted economic governance. The interim governments in the Centre and the provinces have been extraordinarily assertive beyond the usual restraints in the Constitution. Together the economic landscape stands greatly altered. To move along the chosen pathways will need a consolidative than a transformative period of governance. The PTI, or its Independent Candidates, offer neither and hence will not find relevance or preference in the scheme of recovery and restoration which must now seek consolidation.

The scheme of recovery and restoration structured in the last twenty-four months under the PDM, SIFC, IMF and the interim set-up points to a need for staying and consolidating the chosen course. In such a prescriptive environment there is little space to invoke what the Constitution ordains on mandates and political primacy. The Constitution has stood mauled and violated before the same political stakeholders and institutions who may now lay claim to moral ascendancy and relevance. This election will throw up what it will. It is for us to accept the results even if those are heavily qualified. And lumber forward in a hope there shall be light at the end of it.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 2^nd, 2024.

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