Democracy strikes back

Democracy has now struck back with real vengeance; this time, throwing out the entire ruling political hierarchy.

Once again, democracy takes its revenge in our country. Earlier, in February 2008, it had struck in Pakistan after a stormy civil and judicial strife ousted a dictator and ended the ignominy of his eight-year rule. But instead of bringing to power a government of the people, by the people and for the people as democracy should have done, we found a foreign-brokered NRO-based regime installed in Pakistan that had neither the will nor ability to steer the country from the legacy of those eight years of dictatorship into genuine democracy. It was democracy’s misdirected fire.

During five years of the NRO-based civilian rule, neither democracy took root in our country nor did people experience any socio-economic upturn. Instead, they found themselves stuck at the crossroads of another critical juncture suffering the worst-ever governance crisis of their history. The country drifted deeper into an abysmal political chaos and economic uncertainty. The common man’s life could not be more miserable with spiralling food and energy shortages, unabated violence and countrywide lawlessness. It was the worst form of kleptocracy in which the government existed only to aggrandise the personal wealth and political power of the privileged few.

No wonder, democracy now strikes back with real vengeance; this time, throwing out the entire ruling political hierarchy. The post-Bhutto Pakistan Peoples Party stands almost routed from the political scene. Besides giving an emphatic victory and a popular mandate to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) as Pakistan’s largest political party, the May 11 election has placed in our political cradle an infantile newcomer in the form of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) as a potential future player in the country’s politics. Despite the usual post-election bickerings over alleged polling irregularities, democracy decisively restores the PML-N to the political pre-eminence that it enjoyed until it was overthrown by former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf in October 1999.

This is going to be a fateful transition in the country’s history. The PML-N with the experience of two previous unfinished terms, a seasoned and mature leadership and an elaborate party manifesto is now poised to take on the challenges of its renewed mandate. It has been called upon to lead the nation during one of the most difficult and crucial phases of its independent statehood. The task ahead is not going to be easy. The vast array of problems inherent in the crisis engulfing the country are a daunting legacy of domestic and external challenges for any newly-elected government to overcome.

We surely need a strong economic team with a merit-based, professionalised public sector cadre and small but efficient performance-led federal and provincial cabinets for effective handling of the economic and energy crises and dreary law and order situation. Our rulers must realise that our problems are at home. Their solutions are also at home, not in Riyadh, Dubai, London or Washington. Homegrown solutions inter alia include, tightening of belts to reduce governmental spending and borrowings, controlling inflation, rationalising of GDP targets, restoring macroeconomic balance, banning non-essential imports and luxuries to reduce the trade gap.

Self-reliance, simplicity and austerity must be the cardinal principles of our national life in all spheres. Loans are not capital; they are a liability. Foreign aid and loans must be dispensed with by harnessing domestic material and human resources. This would require maximising our agricultural and industrial output, revival of the moribund textile industry and optimum exploitation of our untapped natural wealth. Corruption must be rooted out from all segments of society and at all levels of government and its institutions through an independent and transparent accountability process. The VIP culture involving lavish perks and privileges and provision of luxury cars to all public office-holders, elected or unelected, civilian or military, must be abolished.

The PML-N is known for its economic innovations and social vision and must now resume its special focus on improved infrastructure with motorways, modern roads and railway lines connecting the entire country and establishment of industrial zones along the major motorways. Public welfare related mega projects, which pass on the benefits of development to common people should be implemented with top priority to mass transit subway (metro) projects for Karachi, Lahore and between Rawalpindi and Islamabad, and to country-wide provision of clean drinking water, better health and educational facilities, provision of electricity and improvement of rural infrastructure.

The PML-N also has an elaborate short, medium and long-term manifesto plan to redress the energy crisis by increasing our generation capacity in phases and ensuring efficient use of electricity through effective management and conservation policy. Emergency measures will have to be taken to alleviate the excruciating hardship of the people being caused by frequent and long power outages. This indeed is a governance issue and needs to be addressed by restructuring of our over-centralised energy sector through decentralisation of power generation and supply system in the country.

Also needed is the promotion of an environment of peace and tolerance, while curbing extremism and militancy. On the external front, we need an independent foreign policy based on the Quaid-e-Azam’s vision: peace with all, enmity with none, premised on universally established principles of inter-state relations, focused on protecting vital national and security interests. In the ultimate analysis, however, our problems are not external. Our problems are domestic. All the external problems that we continue to suffer have nothing to do with our foreign policy. They are extensions of our domestic failures, which have seriously constricted our foreign policy options.

Our foremost challenge at this critical juncture is not what we are required to do for others’ interests; it is what we ought to do to serve our own national interests. We need to convert our geopolitical location into an asset rather than liability and regain our lost sovereign independence, freedom of action and national dignity. This will indeed be the litmus test of our new leadership.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 25^th, 2013.