The Blind leading the Blind

In the first episode of Blackadder the Third, a BBC sitcom, Blackadder, while trying to shore up support for the Prince Regent gets Baldrick elected to the House of Commons from Dunny-on-the-wold, a ‘rotten borough’ consisting of a tiny plot of land with several farm animals — three rather mangy cows, a Dachshund named Colin and a small hen in its late forties. In the election, the one voter casts 16, 472 votes in favour of Baldrick (and against Pitt the Even Younger) with the voter and returning officer being Blackadder himself since the previous returning officer ‘accidentally brutally stabbed himself in the stomach while shaving,’ and the previous voter ‘accidentally brutally cut his head off while combing his hair.’ This trivialised comedy showed what was in fact true in most so-called ‘rotten boroughs’ till the Reform Act of 1832. These constituencies were the epitome of electoral corruption where a few voters elected a member of the House of Commons, usually at the behest of a powerful person. Hence, influential men could easily control these constituencies and ensure that not only they but even their progeny win elections from them, a sort of hereditary election. Such rotten boroughs were by no means a small feature of the electoral system of the United Kingdom, since by 1831 out of 406 elected members, 152 were chosen by fewer than one hundred voters, and 88 by fewer than 50 voters. The ‘mother of all parliaments’ was indeed not democratic according to our standards till well into the 19^th century.

The reason for narrating the above is to illustrate the point that democracy develops. Curbs on arbitrary regal power began in 1215 with the Magna Carta, but it was only in 1832 that all men got the right to vote; women had to wait till 1918, and electoral malpractice while not rampant still exists in some form. Britain, nor any other country, developed ideal— or even largely working — democratic institutions overnight or in ninety days; it was a process that took centuries, and trial and error was its mainstay.

The drama — if it can even be called even that — that Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri have been directing in Islamabad clearly exhibits a lack of understanding of the process of democracy. While on the one had, the Kaptaan wants an end to electoral malpractice — something which has always existed in South Asia — overnight, the fiery cleric wants to do away with the system itself and replace it with something which will superbly work, except that only he knows its details. Both are charismatic and therefore their mesmerised followers obey them without question — the blind are again leading the blind.

I have written previously on these pages that the impatience of the Pakistani public might lead to its doom and this saga exemplifies it. We do not want to go through the long and arduous process of democratisation and want to rush it through dharnas and other extra constitutional means. We want ‘real democracy’ — whatever that means — and we want it now. Never mind that in India even after more than a dozen elections (their first general election was in 1951 while ours in 1970), democracy is still taking root and electoral fraud is still present — we want to move beyond what our neighbouring country has achieved in a journey of over half a century and want it better than them. Such are the heights of our delusion. We want a new ‘system’ not because the old one is broken but because we cannot be bothered to fix it. Try real land reforms and you might get a working real democracy in two generations — but who wants to wait that long when Qadri promises utopia right now? Try a mass literacy campaign and bring the literacy rate to more than 70 per cent and you might get a more discerning electorate in a couple of generations — but who wants to wait for that when the Kaptaan is heralding a Naya Pakistan right now?

More than six decades ago we achieved Pakistan too easily. One man became the sole spokesman and obtained for us this land. I wish we had suffered the long agony of a real national movement; then perhaps, we would have thought twice before making a mockery of the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 2^nd, 2014.

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