Democracy in Pakistan

An intensive debate is raging in the country about revival of democracy. What is missing in this debate is an in depth analysis to identify real reasons because of which democracy did not work in Pakistan.

The first essential condition for growth of democracy in any country is acceptance by all the sovereignty of the people. The sovereign people elect representatives from amongst themselves to rule the country with power the ‘sovereign’ delegates to them for a time period. The representatives are required to rule to the fullest satisfaction of people. The people reserve the right to remove those who don’t come up to their expectations in the next general elections no more no less. No one else has a right to dismiss elected delegates.

What makes democracy effective is the democratic political process whereby every political party strictly abides by inner party democracy and party elections. The first requirement is democracy at grass root level.

The other aspect is the people’s participation and their empowerment to directly handle things in their day to day affairs. One of the biggest means is democracy working at lowest administrative level being administered by elected representatives, not by bureaucracy. 

Democracy did not take roots in Pakistan due to a number of reasons, the foremost being that no effort was ever made to politically educate the people. As the very foundation of democracy – political education of people remains weak due to mass illiteracy and extremely low standard of education. Secondly, hardly any one of the national political leaders is or ever was from among the common people. They were and still are elites – top barristers, little holders, bureaucrats, landlords and now also crony capitalists. An other reason is the absence of democratic political process. Basically, it is the result of non-existence of democracy with in the political parties. 

This is unfortunate but more unfortunate is failure of party leadership to acquire political education themselves. The problem Pakistani society faces are many but some of them, the most daunting ones are mass illiteracy division on provincial, linguistic and ethnic basis and further sub-divisions into castes tribes and communities, religious sectarianism and violence, suffocating grip of feudal culture with disdain for those doing manual work, respect for parasites, worried business class, nouveau riche capitalists lacking enterprise and above all feudal ownership of vast areas of land and the feudal treating peasants as slaves. There are many more such problems our society faces. 

But none has been known to political leadership and therefore, never highlighted in political literature. And this is all inherited. The Muslims of India suffered from all this social sickness but to the leaders then Hindus and British were the only problems. So these problems remained unaddressed. Congress was more or less like Muslim League but inner party democracy was slightly more practised in it than in League. Nevertheless, India does have a developing and evolving democracy why? Because after independence constitution was quickly formulated and national elections regularly held. That triggered a political process of sorts which went on taking roots because national elections which follow democratic political process and hold regular party elections. The result is that majority of members in national and state legislature are working politicians, who come from middle and working classes and even from lower castes. A substantial number of central and state ministers are from lower castes or working class.

Had the constitution been quickly formulated and enforced in Pakistan and elections held regularly after independence the political process would have taken roots here as in India. That process was subverted first by Ghulam Muhammad by dissolving sovereign constitutional assembly, then by Ayoub Khan seizing power by ousting legal government, followed by Yahya Khan, Ziaul Haq, Ghulam Ishaque Khan, Farooque Leghari and General Pervez Musharaf.

Now the assemblies have completed their tenure of five years first time in the history of Pakistan. The democracy was been introduced at the grass root level. This is revival of democracy to some extent but there is lot of work to do in this regard.