Democracy and the Devil’s Dice

If your'e among the growing number of citizens willing to throw the dice, beware: if you lose, devil cannot be cheated

“Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms,” said Winston Churchill, former prime minister of the most invasive imperial power in modern history and lifelong advocate of refusing British colonies their independence.

The protests against the prime minister cum monarch of the nation seem to have channeled an angry zeitgeist, forged from the disappointments, resentments and humiliation of decades. There are many legitimate arguments to be made against this form of agitation, and it is, therefore, especially disheartening to see so many critics, when pressed as to why they support a system that they admit is broken, fail to answer with a coherent train of thought and, rather, smugly wave the word ‘democracy’ as a magic wand, a mental stop sign that forbids the obvious question it raises: ‘and then what?’.

It is difficult to defend contempt of the law, corruption, cronyism, other ‘c’ words and electoral rigging outright, but Democracy, apparently, is a means that justifies itself.

But there is no magic in democracy. The supposedly miraculous nature of elections, their ability to transform a nation like a before-and-after advertisement for some ridiculous exercise machine is a myth peddled by developed nations, for much the same reason we convince ourselves that the desperately poor could salvage themselves ‘if only they would stop being lazy and get a job’. Because they have nothing, and we have everything, and it’s too horrible to think that most of that incredible gulf is due to the whims of chance.

Democracy is not benevolently self-correcting, sans external forces. If the famous metaphor for Pakistani democracy is true, if it is true that a sapling uprooted cannot grow, it is also true that a tree that grows crooked will not spontaneously straighten itself. No more than a body in motion will correct its own course. No more than The Market, that Deity of Capitalism, will develop basic decency if left unchecked.

We argue that the West is proof incarnate of the prosperity of democracy, the promised land that awaits us if only we persevere. But this is an incomplete picture of how those nations leapt so far ahead: America inherited a massive, bountiful land at a time when the indigenous population was nearly wiped out by plague and was beneficiary of the greatest mechanisation process in history. Britain, France and Holland owe their power and influence to their times as Empires, not to democracy, and much of their current prosperity is built on the subjugation of the less fortunate in the global village. A hundred other factors, most of them geographical and entirely outside anyone’s control, conspired to make the West powerful. Democracy did not.

China, Russia, Singapore, Mexico, Cuba, Portugal, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea — all examples in the 20th century of outright or de facto dictatorships, which made a mad sprint forward in development and particularly economic indices, though often, particularly with China, at horrific human cost.

The post-war German and Japanese economic miracles, to provide a counterexample, were indeed presided over by democratic governments, but owed a great deal (particularly in West Germany) to the economic intervention of the allied powers, the forcible reduction of military spending to negligible amounts and to guided growth.

A government for the people? The majority of elected officials, everywhere, rule for the sake of ruling, for the perks and for the power. The primary job of a politician is to get re-elected. In theory, this creates accountability, but powerful people don’t like hard work and nosy questions any more than the rest of us and so have spun an entire profession dedicated, by virtue of backdoor deals, demonstrably empty campaign promises, exclusive political machinery etc. to keeping the so-called overlords of public service, i.e., the thrice-damned public, at arm’s length.

A government of the people? According to Pildat, the average assets of an MNA amount to Rs87 million, a figure you may recognise as being roughly ‘impossible’ times more than that of the average member of ‘the people’. What connection, what representation, what empathy can be expected from men and women who have more homes than the average member of the public has meals in a day?

So, we are left then with government by the people, electoralism, that final graveyard where arguments go to die. This runs into a common problem: what the public is interested in is not necessarily in the public interest.

More than half of all Pakistanis live below the poverty line, we are the second-worst country on Earth for women and our minorities live in constant fear of attacks that the government has not been able to protect them from. In the worst cases, the State actively marginalises them through legislation.

The trends are backwards. Our HDI ranking has been frozen at an abysmal state for five years, women are worse off, there are more people under the poverty line, and intolerance seems to be growing, not receding.

Worse, there is no apparent political will to change course. Education and health are disdainfully thrown the same miniscule scraps from the budget as before. The last person to actively oppose anti-woman legislation was a dictator. No politician possesses the courage to stand up to extremist ideology; indeed, when Salmaan Taseer was murdered by his guard, his murderer was showered by rose petals and no religious or political leader dared openly condemn the attack.

It is simply not good enough to build a positive case.

No, the very real benefits of democracy are not the greatnesses that it will bring us, but the horrors it may spare us.

Democracy is a short-odds bet, made not to secure some fantastic developmental progress, but to guard against the worst excesses, the history-scarring terrors that can arise when one man is given unquestioned power over a people. There are some exceptions — Hitler was democratically elected — but the most utterly depraved acts of assault committed upon entire countries have come from dictators, such as Pol Pot, Papa Doc, Slobodan Milosovec, Augusto Pinochet and Joseph Stalin. Do not Google what they did to opponents, bystanders and even allies if you want to sleep tonight, or ever again.

So, is democracy worth it, for troubled nations like Pakistan? Allow me to answer a straightforward question with a convoluted metaphor.

The Devil appears with a pair of dice, and asks you to try your luck. If you come up with two sixes, you will be given power, prestige and wealth. But roll lower and shadows will gather over your fate. Low enough, and the results will be so irreparably catastrophic that death will be the luxury you fantasise about in your dreams.

Should you roll the Devil’s Dice? There is no one, true answer to that. The dice are fair and the reward tantalising, but the odds are well under one in 10. Will you stake your life? It depends on the value you place on it. A well-to-do man would have to be truly greedy or foolish to stake everything he has on the promise of even greater riches. But a poor man, destitute, dying, desperate? He will roll the dice, because what has he to lose?

There is no one, true answer to the question of democracy vs dictatorship because it depends entirely on how truly desperate you believe Pakistan is, how hopeless its position. If you are among the growing number of citizens willing to throw the dice, I do not judge you, but beware: if you lose, the devil cannot be cheated. And he will have his due.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 25^th, 2014.

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