An undemocratic Pakistan

People in America usually argue that the voting citizens must always cast their vote. The argument goes further by saying that those who don’t vote have no right to complain when the elected government does things, which they as citizens do not find in line with their aspirations. Only a voting citizen has the right to complain about the unpopular actions of an elected government because they fulfilled their responsibility of casting their vote.

Here is what common sense dictates though: if you voted and brought the government that goes ahead and does awful things, you have no right to complain because you brought this government in, you caused this. On the other hand, if I did not vote and decided to not even leave the house on Election Day, I have every right to complain about the illegal and unpopular actions of the government because I did not cause it. My fingerprints are not on it.

Well, regardless of who is the winner in this debate, something strange happened with the citizens of Pakistan in February. They voted their hearts out. They voted like they had never voted before. Lo and behold, they still do not have the right to complain according to the logic explained above because while they voted in tremendous numbers, their fingerprints are still not to be found on this government. They can be forgiven for not being responsible for this government. The government can also go about its business without ever feeling as being responsible to this citizenry. Well, they actually do. What a strange democratic system in place!

This week the weather in Islamabad was unusually pleasant for this time of the year. I drove around various parts of the city. The most frequent thing that I saw in Islamabad was the solar panels installed over the houses’ rooftops. I talked to many people about these solar panels. Many people made a case for them as a way to reduce their electricity bill. Some even mentioned the magic words ‘clean energy’. There were also those who said that solar generation helped fight the war against climate change. Islamabad being the city of educated people or so we like to think, this didn’t come as a surprise even in a country where not many people know about climate change being the worst threat to Pakistan’s security.

Here is what I realised though; all those reasons that people mentioned in support of going solar were true but there was another lingering factor driving much of this solarisation: the feeling of being on your own in a country where the government does nothing for you but can do anything to you. And there is not a door which one can knock on for justice. Not depending on the government in energy generation is at the heart of people installing solar panels. Bad economy might seem to be driving it but bad democracy is at the heart of it.

The government is not only non-existent inside people’s hearts but is absent on the streets, roads, infrastructure and other areas of governance also. Adam Smith once said that the best results in a group will come when everyone in the group does what’s good for themselves. He may have changed his mind after taking a good look at Pakistan. The people did what was best for them by exercising their right to vote. The movers and shakers of this nation did what was best for them. And here we are today with a result that is certainly not good for the country. Pakistan has become home to leading threats: the erosion of democracy, climate change assaulting unabated without anyone even talking about it, India aggressively pursuing lobbying inside the United States to denuclearise Pakistan, and an economy almost always on the verge of collapse.

I am not sure how this would all be fixed. I am sure of one thing though: certain kinds of damages are irreversible.

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

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