Elections and democratic politics in Pakistan

A counterintuitive view of the chessboard

Fayyaz Baqir

Fault lines of democratic politics in Pakistan

Democracy in Pakistan was never in the interests of the west. Pakistan inherited a predominantly anti-imperialist public opinion. During the Cold War years, the western empire led by the US wanted Pakistan to serve as a frontline state to stop the expansion of the communist ‘east’. To neutralise this public opinion, the empire cultivated Pakistan’s establishment. The empire also provided financial, intellectual, political and ideological resources to strengthen the grip of the ‘modernist’ elite against the ‘corrupt’ opposition and ‘backward’ masses. An economic model based on generous lending from the west, and a political model based on manipulation of public opinion through lies, deceit, violations of the Constitution, use of state violence, privatisation of violence in support of state power and an ideological model based on colonisation of Islam and glorification of military might of the state was established to prepare Pakistan to play its role as an ally of the ‘free world’. This set the interests of the ruling elite against the interests of popularly elected governments. This international context existed in tandem with another national context, the problem of majoritarian democracy.

The creation of Pakistan was a Muslim minority’s response to majoritarian democracy in Hindu-majority India. Pakistan was not the result of the existence of two nations but the inability of the leaders of the two ‘nations’ to agree on a negotiated settlement for protecting the interests of a permanent minority against a permanent majority, condemned to live under caste-based structured violence in the guise of nonviolence. The majority community solved these paradoxes by getting used to these paradoxes, something that the Muslim minority and ‘untouchables’ did not accept. The creation of Pakistan did not end the problems of majoritarian democracy. In Pakistan, a Bengali majority replaced the Hindu majority in relation to a Punjabi minority. The Pakistani leadership again solved this minority-majority conflict through actions that led to the separation of East Pakistan. The conflict between the majority vote power of the Bengalis and Punjabi power based on big land holdings and the army created the foundation for the second split after Independence.

The compulsions of the Cold War necessitated the use of various forms of rigging. The first form of rigging was to deny public space to anti-imperialist parties. It started with imposing a ban on the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) on trumped up charges of hatching a conspiracy to carry out a coup d’état to overthrow the legitimate government. CPP workers and leaders were arrested, harassed, imprisoned, tortured and persecuted and a young leader of the CPP, Hasan Nasir, was tortured to death. This was followed by the imposition of Martial Laws, banning of numerous political parties, purging of the civil services and imposition of restrictions on the press, student unions and trade unions. Other forms of rigging included bribing or intimidating the candidates for the National and provincial Assemblies, setting up fake polling stations, fake vote counting, denial of right to vote or contest elections to women, dodging inner-party elections, sale of party tickets to wealthy candidates, dragging decisions on cases filed against rigging, and manipulation of election results. As the state played the major role in rigging elections, it is very important to understand the powers and limitations of the state in imposing its political will on the people. The Pakistani state appears to be an oxymoron in relation to civil society.

Limitations of the security state

In dealing with hostile public opinion and a hegemonic neighbour, Pakistan’s elite decided to make Pakistan a security state. The security state that came into existence had limited political space and financial resources to keep a monopoly over the use of violence. This created the need for privatisation of violence. This ‘privatisation’ policy led to the use of tribal Lashkars in the 1948 ‘Jihad’ in Kashmir, undeclared permission to local tribal chiefs to maintain private jails and armies, and the creation of a police-tribal chiefs-landlords’ nexus in dispensing justice in rural communities, giving patronage to informal justice in dealing with the cases of karo kari, bonded labour and other disputes, and creation and support of religious militant outfits after the landmark events of 1971, 1979 and 2001. Patronage to militancy was followed by state patronage of vigilante groups and street justice. In addition to the use of private violence for curbing dissenting voices, the Pakistani establishment used colonisation and weaponisation of Islam in public discourse, preparation of educational texts, the legislative process and unleashing violent public sentiments against dissenting voices. Pakistan’s secular elite resorted to the colonisation of Islam to suit its political interests. There is a long list of political and legislative decisions to use Islam as a political ploy, from Jihad in Kashmir to the creation of the Islamic Ideology Council to legislation on minorities to Jihad in Afghanistan.

Military governments were always unable to rule without the support of the political class. Each military government therefore handpicked a King’s Party to run the affairs of government. Generals preferred the Presidential form of government so that they could command political power like the head of an army. A Presidential form of government made it easy for the President to control the electoral college of Basic Democracy or Majlis-e-Shura and rig the elections to the local bodies. To tighten their grip on power they purged the ranks of politicians through the passage of rules like the Elected Bodies Disqualification Order (EBDO) under Ayub Khan, firing of 303 senior civil servants by Yahya Khan, and other such laws to cleanse the pool. Ziaul Haq also made it mandatory to hold non-party elections at local level to curb opposition to his unconstitutional rule. He and General Musharraf used Referendums to legitimise usurpation of power and suspend the electoral process.

There are two other characteristics of the Pakistani state that deepened mistrust between the state and the masses and necessitated the perpetuation of rigging the political process. One, Pakistan inherited a law and order administration from the British and it did not have an administrative, social and political infrastructure to perform welfare functions below the district level, unlike the Police and Revenue department that could reach out to every village. Along with other factors, this resulted in the exodus of population from rural to urban areas and emergence of power brokers to provide poor people access to justice, shelter, jobs and other necessities on payment, thereby making ‘corruption’ a part of the governance system. These power brokers filled the gap created due to the absence of a reformist or revolutionary leadership to lead the resistance. Revolutionary groups had a revolutionary ideology but weak revolutionary politics. They also considered the role played by the power brokers not as a form of class struggle but as a form of co-option. Civil society later on took over the welfare function but was looked down upon by the revolutionary vanguard for the same reason. Two, aid-based economic policies mediated by the state to ‘incentivise’ growth through price manipulation and provision of targeted subsidies and regressive taxation created fault lines in the form of the urban-rural divide, Punjabi-non- Punjabi uneven development, unequal terms of trade between agriculture and industry and industrial capitalists and the working class. These two facts created a permanent need to rig the election process to suppress the dissenting voices ‘in the interest of the stability of Pakistan’. However, this context clearly showed the state’s dependence on civil society and the informal power brokers to perform welfare functions and build trust among various constituencies of interest.

Compulsions of parliamentary politics

The Pakistani elite had little interest in investing in increasing the size of the cake and greater interest in increasing their share of the cake through deal making behind closed doors. Therefore, whenever elected parliaments were allowed to function, they took little interest in legislative work and demanded perks, licences, permits, getting their loans written off or seeking development funds for their constituencies, something that was not part of their job. Legislators abandon their duties of law making and legislation is mostly introduced through Ordinances drafted by civil servants during intervals when the legislature is not in session. Budgets are passed through hasty budget sessions. Parliamentary sessions are characterised by a low level of attendance by the members and ministers and rare attendance of the prime ministers. Elected representatives take over the role of procurement. This helps them finance the election game. The election game makes abundant use of promises and construction of infrastructure projects to please the voters.

Infrastructure projects are visible and provide an opportunity to elected representatives to receive a ‘commission’ to recover their election expenses that consist of purchasing a party ticket, running election campaigns, managing a guest house for visitors and running their ‘kitchen’. Infrastructure projects also provide ‘commissions’ to bureaucrats and lucrative contracts to ‘development professionals’ in the global development industry. These opportunities are created due to faulty practices in costing and designing the projects. Project documents (prodocs) don’t take into consideration existing micro infrastructure built by the community; they have overdeveloped specifications and unrealistic costs. Tendering and hiring contractors further jacks up the project cost. Robber Baron politicians benefitting from the pilferage of resources during the procurement process are very good at playing opposition politicians even when they are in government. This deepens the existing trust deficit between the citizens and the government and creates faith in the need for a strongman.

State and market failure in promoting human development

As already mentioned, undemocratic state policies to suppress public opinion were accompanied by predatory economic practices and created a deep mistrust between the state and the citizens. It is very important to understand these predatory practices because forms of resistance succeed if they provide an appropriate response to different forms of exploitation. Pakistan followed the path of state capitalism in the guise of a ‘free’ market economy. Various forms of state capitalism, starting from Ayub Khan’s era to the current Shahbaz Sharif government, have underperformed in developing human and social capital and alleviating poverty. State failure in performing its welfare role has been compensated to some extent by civil society and philanthropy in Pakistan. This pattern of social development has created the conditions for some interdependence between the state and civil society.

Due to the low level of human development in the early years of Pakistan, the US government supported capital intensive development to compensate for underdevelopment of human capital. This led to neglect of human development. Despite the low intensity of human capital, export of human capital has been one of the major sources of foreign exchange earnings in Pakistan since 1972. Our state has failed to harness this most important resource to improve economic performance. The state’s dependence on civil society and overseas workers to perform its welfare and growth functions has created the possibility and need for a new form of resistance based on leveraging state-civil society interdependence to claim a greater share for low income communities in the national budget and power structure. This form of resistance is not considered a legitimate form of resistance because it has not made it to the official establishment and revolutionary texts. There is well documented evidence of civil society’s success in seeking concessions from the state in areas of welfare and justice. Civil society has ushered in a silent revolution in Pakistan by following the path of belonging, not ‘othering’ in dealing with the state. This is the path of leveraging interdependence. Following this form of resistance can enlarge the range of options available to the masses to reverse the politics of elite capture.

Leveraging interdependence as a new form of resistance

Use of interdependence sets the stage for establishing new rules for citizens’ action in the political arena. Leveraging interdependence to claim a greater share of power for citizens is much more effective than delegating power to elected representatives for the next five years, holding receptions for politicians (and earning a bad name), holding protest rallies, making rent payment for access to justice, shelter and security, and taking the path of rural-urban migration to access the fruits of development. As the state has abandoned most of its welfare and justice functions, these responsibilities have been taken over by civil and ‘uncivil’ society. Civil society has taken the smart path of ‘belonging to’ rather than ‘othering’ the state. It has taken the path of making inroads into the power structure. Through a widespread network of interest groups, it has established a low profile presence that can outmanoeuvre the limited outreach of the state’s power. Use of social media has provided a powerful tool to civil society in the realm of social justice. In the realm of justice, civil society organisations have also worked for introducing new legislation, public interest litigation and legal aid. A counterintuitive way of dealing with the apathy of the elite is to start trust building with the state, restoring the social infrastructure during colonial rule, engaging in dialogue and entering into a partnership with the state. This is not co-option. This is social transformation during a moment of rupture, when both classical capitalism and classical socialism have failed (Arguably, both are likely to reinvent themselves, such being the dialectic of modern capitalism – Ed.).

Transformative steps on the path of interdependence can consist of reducing the footprint of the state, shifting the battle ground from factory floor to interest groups because the site of surplus appropriation has moved beyond the location of production to include the location of exchange, distribution and consumption and relations of production are defined by the relationship between the citizens and the state, not only factory owner and the worker. Civil society, not trade unions alone will be the backbone of this new form of resistance. Interdependence can be strengthened by encouraging and regulating the private sector, opening trade with our neighbours, reforming the tax system and rationalizing the allocation of subsidies. Nurturing and using interdependence can play a significant role in dealing with the trust deficit within the elite and between the state and civil society.

Trust building hinges on one important trait – humility. Humility is not negation of rebellion. Humility in simple words means willingness to learn from the ‘other’. It means asking people about their priorities, validating the response by asking for reciprocation, testing the action model with the help of early adopters. Being patient and partnering with people who are willing to follow the interdependence approach requires knowing the appropriate role of all the partners and starting at local level. Our establishment has converted national parties into provincial parties. Political parties have fought back by passing the 18^th Amendment. People have limited access to power both at national and provincial level and the political, administrative and fiscal authority of the state has not been devolved to the local level. Fighting the power game at the top requires building capital intensive hierarchical structures and confronting the centralised power structure by resistance organisation. Building a resistance movement as a hierarchical structure converts the resistance movement into a mirror image of the predatory power structure.

What suits the movement for social transformation is an organisational structure like the Women’s Action Forum (WAF), which gives complete autonomy to local units, cuts down bureaucracy and focuses on a simple set of demands and local action. A hierarchical power structure is like a stone wall and WAF’s politics is like water. Water can find its way through innumerable cracks and erode the power of stone. WAF provides an excellent model for resistance in line with the path of interdependence. This model helps in keeping focus on a local agenda and derives strength from the devolution of political, administrative and fiscal authority to local government. A good example of this model is provided by the Am Admi Party (AAP) of Kejriwal in India. Our intellectual barrier in the way of this form of struggle is denial of interdependence, denial of taking responsibility, and wishing to fill the performance gaps of the state with demagogy and megalomania while investing our energies in cults and short cuts. We witness an interesting dilemma in our political arena. In the rest of the world failure is always an orphan and success has many fathers. In Pakistan success is always an orphan and failure has so many fathers. The path of interdependence and local action can help us make the transition from representative democracy to participatory democracy and provide an effective check to the politics of rigging. For the convenience of those who trust the label on the bottle of wine rather than their taste buds, I can frame my argument as an invitation for ‘constitutional guerilla warfare’.