Democratic refuge?

Electioneering in Gilgit-Baltistan centers on these slogans and promises: should you (s)elect us to power, we would make G-B like Karachi; if (s)elected, we would make Lahore of G-B; should you afford us yet another opportunity, we would change your fate the same way we did for the rest of the country; we would freely guard free and fair elections against any potential rigging —for we are the only tried and tested saviours of the country and its people.

Of all the instruments employed to gauge politics, truth, power and democracy in Pakistan, electioneering offers a relatively accurate account of what power wielders are actually up to. Gilgit-Baltistan is no exception. Now that G-B goes to polls today, one must make sense of the stated and inferred axis of power - from all the trumpets, clichés and campaign theaters that preceded and will succeed it. And yes, from their governance record in the rest of the country.

The promises of replicating Lahore or Karachi in G-B - regardless of its distinct topography, demography and political status - betray not merely a lack of pragmatic vision but a familiar contempt for it. The parties in power are not, however, without a plan. They have every plan to capture and perpetuate their hold on power - all through a democratic contract that, in this country, is largely forged not between the rulers and the ruled, but between the rulers themselves.

This way, the people addressed during the campaign are not the people. And G-B's potential promises of prosperity are not for G-B. All their addresses and beseeching are directed not towards the people.

One might wonder whether democracy and the people still hold any genuine relevance in the calculus of the axis of power. The answer is largely affirmative - for unfortunate reasons, though. Notwithstanding their status as largely non-entities, the people of Pakistan are still held dear by the rulers - instrumentally dear. For without the people, whose mandate would they dramatically claim? Without the people, who would they attribute their vested interests to? In the absence of the people, who would feed the predatory appetite of the powerful, and whose support would they invoke when their power is in danger? Without the people, who would erect and sustain their palaces of power and perks? On whose backs would their tax economy run? Who would they employ their brute tendencies on?

The same logic holds for democracy itself. Without it, what would those in power call their arrangements, if not democratic? Without democracy, there is open dictatorship - something that invites not only global censure but domestic resistance. For them, democracy in our country potentially defends everything but itself. Therefore, politics, elections and power in Pakistan are rarely more than a Faustian bargain - of power, with power, for power.

Those on both side of contracts – having already sacrificed people's potential prosperity, civilian space, constitutional order and any prospect of national prosperity – (s)elect each other for five more years. This would not be possible under any other political dispensation, for dictatorship's naked illegitimacy garners public ire and international condemnation. Democracy legitimises the arrangement - for audiences within and without. It is made, therefore, to defend authoritarianism under the label of a hybrid regime. Had the country been anything but a democracy at inception, it might, paradoxically, have been democratised in a truer sense long ago.

Democracy dies loudly elsewhere. In Pakistan, its demise is being institutionalised quietly - ballot by ballot, promise by promise. Today, every party is confident of its (s)election. The ones left uncertain - desperately looking - are the people. For the power, as ever, has already made its calculations. The campaigns, the promises, the theater - all consecrate what corridors have already settled. The people are not excluded. They are its alibi - and on polling day, they vote with heartbreaking faithfulness.

G-B polls today. The democracy shivers. The fragile Constitution watches. The people wait. G-B deserves neither the slapped fate of Karachi nor Lahore - it deserves itself.

Hope democracy wins. And so does G-B.