That great achievement

What a price has been paid to keep the ‘system’ in place, democracy be practised in warped, almost destructive form.

And so, it has come to pass, as predicted by Pamela Constable in her 2011 book, Playing with Fire — Pakistan at War with Itself. Despite the then doubts as to the survival of President Asif Ali Zardari and his regime, unpopular at home as it was, all that mattered was to allow him and it to survive, and serve out their term, so that, as she put it, “the counterproductive cycle of political or military intervention that so often aborted Pakistan’s still-nascent democratic experiment” would not be repeated.

“The only way to break the cycle that had bedeviled Pakistan for so long” was for the nation to swallow whole the revenge wreaked by Zardari’s, and his government’s, unique form of democracy. “So it comes down to this: ensuring that an unpopular, corrupt and indifferent leader (and his government) stayed in office for (their) full term was likely to be the single greatest political achievement in Pakistan’s entire 66-year existence.”

Well, the single greatest political achievement is upon us, but the question being asked by some is whether it has been worthwhile. Others have answered, agreeing with Constable, that any civilian or military coup would have been much worse for Pakistan than the continuing chaos and damage inflicted by Zardari and his regime.

Zardari, of course, will outlast this felicitously dying government with which we have had no option but to live with — or die with, as so many have done in the past five years. From the beginning, the Zardari regime’s silence on murders committed due to the blasphemy laws and on the death and devastation caused by its inactivity — its cowardly petrifaction — when faced by the numerous acts of terrorism and sectarian violence has been shameless in the extreme. What a price has been paid just to keep the wonky ‘system’ in place, to allow democracy to be practised in a warped, almost destructive form.

There is a further price to be paid by this unfortunate nation, as what will follow this Zardari regime can only either be a different form of democracy’s revenge with a second Zardari regime, or another revised form of Nawaz Sharif and his ameerul momineen ambitions. That would now seem to be the stark and simple choice foisted upon the Islamic Republic by the elections — vital if the ‘system’ is to continue to survive — now on the national agenda. The amount of faith put on elections considering what is likely to be their outcome is amazing — even the all-powerful army chief has told us, “It is my dream that free, fair and transparent elections take place on time.”

Free, fair, transparent? Well, going by the record, remembering past elections and despite the faith now being heaped upon the Election Commission of Pakistan and its mature chief, freedom, fairness and transparency, rather like the truth, are alien to the Pakistani psyche. The army’s protestations, excessive some might say, that it wishes nothing else than the flourishing of democracy (and even its revenge) would seem indicative of its helplessness to at least nudge those responsible into providing some form of governance. The three-year extension has taken its toll.

The closer we get to the blessed elections, the less is used the word ‘change’, which in the near past has been a firm factor that many have suggested is the only way forward. As time has gone by, any change is now a distant dream. The hoped for agents of change have been smartly out-manoeuvered and apparently have fallen by the wayside.

We are at the mercy of political relics, who have been in positions of power for longer than is decent in what is supposed to be a democratic dispensation. The relics may no longer be affordable in what is seen by some to be a state on the brink of failure — but they are all that is on the ground. Miracles, fresh faces, clean minds have no role to play.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 2^nd, 2013.