Real democracy yet to come

THE elections on Feb 18, and the bewildering aftermath, remind one of two oft-forgotten truths: (a) we are a good nation with bad leaders and (b) it is difficult to get rid of the anti-people system imposed by our leaders for over half a century.

Our people are good, because their only desire in life is good governance and equal opportunities. They excel when given such an environment. They were also able to achieve a lot in the early years in terms of rehabilitation of refugees, sports, education, communications, banking and agriculture. They even produced the 1956 Constitution in spite of feudal reluctance and negative inroads by a uniformed defence minister in the 1954 cabinet. We rose from zeroes to heroes despite doubts about our capacity to survive as a new country.

Our leaders, on the other hand, are bad because they destroyed all these achievements; in terms of territory (1971), civil society, the Constitution, institutions, and the pride, confidence, security, even sovereignty of our nation. They did it by perpetuating their hold through an undemocratic system. In the process, our civil society was suppressed, almost paralysed, and lost most signs of activity. However, since March 9, 2007, our nation has been struggling for the re-birth of its civil society along with an independent legal fraternity. However, fears abound that the post-election scenario may delay this resurrection. There are many reasons for concern. First, we see the same old faces, or their relatives, in the assemblies without any concrete evidence that the soul behind these faces may be different now. The forces that have been traditionally using them as pawns on the political chessboard are still operational in the same old equation.

Second, more than a 100 political parties still follow the same dictatorial patterns that revolve around a single person, or family. Their epicentre is active in dubious deals with the establishment to the complete exclusion of other members. The parties do not have an effective or long term commitment to democracy, an independent judiciary, merit and public welfare. Their recent track record still haunts the nation, including support to Gen Musharraf and the system at crucial moments such as the LFO in 2003 followed by the 17th amendment, sabotage of the Charter of Democracy in 2006, US and Saudi deals with Musharraf in 2007, and a lukewarm support to the lawyers’ movement for the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and other judges.

Has the election of Feb 18 suddenly transformed them into angels? If so, why then the ambivalent or double-edged stances of PPP, Q-League or MQM on issues, which have already been decided by the people in these polls such as the restoration of pre-PCO judges, Article 58-2(b), retention of Gen Musharraf as president and the role of the army in politics? Why these forward blocks? Why a stampede of independent MNAs and MPAs to the winning parties? Will the current suspension of the relevant law not create another wave of horse-trading in the assembly?

Third, the governing style of the caretakers (read Musharraf) is very similar to the pre-election pattern such as decisions of the election commission and superior courts including renewed implementation of National Reconciliation Ordinance, high profile appointments of Governor Balochistan, Chairman PIA and Islamabad High Court, and gas shells on protest rallies. This is creating doubts about the much propagated image-building impression that the army is distancing itself from Musharraf.

Fourth, the capacity of the ruling elite to manipulate the Constitution, laws, parties, institutions and persons should not be underestimated. The system has perfected many techniques and can go to any length for political bribery, outright purchase, arm-twisting, coercion and harassment through explosions, abductions, even assassination of potential challengers. During the last couple of years the nation has tasted each one of these specimens.

Articulated or not, such concerns exist, creating a wide spectrum of post-election prospects. The best scenario is the resignation of Gen Musharraf, which is Nawaz Sharif’s demand, and the worst scenario is that, as in 1971, the assemblies may not be summoned on one pretext or another — Sheikh Rashid’s veiled threats about tinkering with Article 58-2(b). The actual developments may lie somewhere in between, depending on the extent, duration and mode of the invisible support of the army and the US to Gen Musharraf. The army is as much a part of this system, if not more, as the political parties have been, with the US as its consistent supporter. This links our past with the present, and the future.

The inescapable conclusion is that people are not likely to get what they have demanded by their vote on Feb 18 in the near future. Not yet. It is not only about power today, but also about the accumulated benefits of power in the past. At this juncture the components of this system are incapable of thinking beyond this. To change this thinking the war between the citizen and the system must continue. It openly flared up on March 9, 2007 in the court compounds and media lounges and spread across the country. Although it was suppressed with a heavy hand, it is still smouldering under the surface. To keep it going and win in the long run, the citizen must change his horse.

The political parties, with their feudal culture and dictatorial moulds, are not a reliable horse for this fight. Their half-hearted artificial participation in the current phase was constantly undermining the combined struggle so valiantly waged by the legal fraternity and media with full public support. On many occasions in this period, the system creaked loudly and Gen Musharraf wobbled visibly but the political parties provided valuable, timely support to strengthen both. The movement reeled back from this treacherous blow, but the parties gained in bargaining power with the system. They will seek such gains in the future too, at the cost of the citizen.

0n Feb 18 the people started the second round, but their leadership is not in safe hands. It cannot be, till the political parties are internally restructured and are able to smash the personality cult, and replace secret decisions with open votes. But the existing feudal, dictatorial, religious and money-based vested interests in the parties will never allow this.

The only way out of this quagmire is that the people should by-pass the existing political parties and fully support the lawyers’ movement for the rule of law. Continued assault will shake the system in the short term, and destroy it in the long term. In the process the people will learn all the lessons of textbook democracy, and create new political parties which are capable of choosing a new leadership from the grassroots through multi-tier, open elections. Only such parties can bring real democracy in the country and deliver what the people demanded on Feb 18.

masudmufti@hotmail.com

Goethe and his times

FOUR men of letters are the supreme titans of European literature — Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe — each the embodiment of a great epoch of western culture, ancient, mediaeval, renaissance and modern. Idolatry of Goethe as the prototype of the inquiring spirit and courageous intellect has intensified since the second centenary of his birth.

Goethe’s Faust has become, in our complex and bewildering world, the summation of man’s search of his soul. Yet of one thing there can be no doubt: Goethe best epitomises the explosive period of transition from classicism to romanticism in the arts, from rationalism to spiritual renascence, from the generalisations of mathematical and physical science to the new theories of biology and social science, from monarchy and authoritarian government to social and political democracy.

The great era of change centred in about 1800, which is also the mid point in Goethe’s creative life (1770 to 1831). The very comprehensiveness of his interests and experience and the tremendous span of his career stamp him as the figure most expressive of his time.

From childhood to advanced age, he looked upon the advantages of his life as a challenge to self development and self expression. He once called his life “one long adventure, not the adventure of striving to bring to perfection what nature had implanted in him, but the endeavour to acquire that which she had not”. He became, like Dante, a man with a great mission to humanity. He became an inspired interpreter of the spiritual issues of his day — a role that appears everywhere in his intensely personal writings. He once spoke of his works “as one long confession”.

While England and France forged ahead, exploring the radical ideas of Enlightenment, German culture remained content with the piety of Reformation until well past the middle of the 18th century. And yet it is thoroughly a German word, Aufklarung (Enlightenment) that the age is best known by. It was also Germany that took the movement in a peculiar but important new direction with Goethe leading the way.

Although Voltaire said that Prussia’s capital, Berlin, would be the Athens of Europe, it in fact was a tribute to Prussia’s ruler, Frederick the Great. Voltaire observed in private that Berlin was more like Sparta than Athens. In fact Weimer under Duke Karl August was ‘the little Athens of Germany’, as Goethe described it. Between 1775 and 1828, Karl August attracted to Weimer such literary giants as Goethe, Schiller, Wieland and Herder.

The German Aufklarung struggled into being, starting almost from scratch. Leibnitz, generally considered the Father of the German Enlightenment, was a brilliant disciple of the French philosophers and British scientists. A universal genius, a belated renaissance man, Leibnitz was competent in science, theology, metaphysics, mathematics, mechanics, law, history, diplomacy and politics. Leibnitz’s metaphysical interests led him to conceive a universe whose ultimate substance was not atoms of matter but units of force or energy which he called “monads”. Leibnitz invented calculus at the time when Newton was doing the same thing in England. Through all his indefatigable intellectual labours, Leibnitz sought not merely to advance knowledge, but to reconcile its contradictory parts. He was at once a bold innovator and a cautious traditionalist.

Wolff, a standard-bearer of Aufklarung, made Leibnitz’s rational Christianity and rational philosophy popular amongst the Germans. Lessing, another Aufklarer, popularised the concept of religion as an evolutionary process-as both being and becoming. In his Laocoon, Lessing argued that some arts were concerned with space, while others were concerned with time and this made a difference in the artists approach to his subject. The arts of space-painting and sculptor-perpetuate a single moment in time, and their beauty, paradoxically, was therefore to be judged on their timelessness.

Poetry on the other hand, said Lessing, exists in time. It deals not with a single moment but the whole of transitory events. The beauty of poetry is that it traces an emotional event like Laocoon’s agony from beginning to end.

At its best the German Enlightenment was an attempt to join and extend the culture of other nations. Three other great Aufklarer also reflect this attempt. They are Winckelmann with an overwhelming passion for ancient Greece, especially its sculptor; Wieland with his cult for the tranquil enjoyment of life, accepting both reason and senses; and Kant with his three great critiques of pure reason and of judgment.

All three were attempting to fuse the different elements of French, English and German thought. Kant believed that the mind was not simply a passive receptacle for sensory impressions. It did this through categories of perception, inherent in the very structure of mind. The most famous of these was the categorical imperative, which held that the behaviour of man was dictated by an intuitive standard which prompted him to act as he thought other men should act.

The influence of Kant was wide and deep. His mind ranged over so many fields and illuminated so many matters that Goethe said: “Reading Kant is like entering a lighted room.”

Restoring the judges

WITH those words, 19th century British statesman William Gladstone coined a phrase that has echoed in political and legal discourse ever since. Indeed, he could have been speaking about Pakistan today. A miscarriage of justice took place in Islamabad exactly one year and one day ago. It has not been rectified.

The defining moment for the incoming, popularly elected government will come when it tackles the issue. It should think of the constitutional legacy of Quaid-i-Azam M.A. Jinnah, who was also one of the subcontinent’s finest attorneys. The Quaid would have been proud of the role played by Iftikhar Chaudhry, Aitzaz Ahsan, Munir Malik and their cohorts in last year’s movement for judicial independence.

They are the real heroes of 2007. Their deeds inspired the Black Coat Revolution when thousands of attorneys took to the streets in defence of civil law and in defiance of martial law. Without their courage and exemplary conduct, which has won global acclaim, there would have been no democratic revolution on Feb 18.

Unfortunately, even though three weeks have elapsed since the general elections, the need to restore the 63 judges is not visible in the political agenda of the electoral winners. This lack of priority may well be the handiwork of the Bush administration. It continues to meddle in Pakistani politics even though the electorate voted overwhelmingly against the King’s party, in large measure because Musharraf was seen to be an American puppet.

The White House, depressed at the electoral outcome, is doing its utmost to salvage the Musharraf presidency. That is the view of many including Barbara Boxer, a US Senator from California. She is aghast that while Washington is busy spending billions of dollars in Iraq to set up a judiciary, it is taking no action to help restore the judiciary in a country which already has one. Ms Boxer poses a rhetorical question: “Imagine what would happen if President Bush went to the microphone and said: ‘Today I’m firing the Supreme Court and all the judges can go home!’” She opines that the Bush administration has concluded that re-seating the deposed judges would lead to Musharraf’s removal from office.

The White House is doing everything it can to prevent that from happening and does not care that this undercuts its commitment to democracy.

Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, has reached a similar conclusion. He adds that by failing to take a strong and vocal position on the restoration of the deposed judges, Washington is not helping to control the rising anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. Notwithstanding his plummeting popularity at home, Bush still seems to wield considerable influence in Pakistan.

Sadly, many Pakistani political leaders and even some analysts have begun to argue that judicial restoration is not in the country’s interest. The first job, according to this argument, is to restore democracy to the country. They contend that if the new government takes up the issue of judicial restoration, it will be sucked into a quagmire.

But people who put forward this argument are subscribing to a double standard. Where were these ‘defenders of democracy’ when Musharraf was dismantling the Constitution, removing the judges of the Supreme Court at will and arresting the most senior attorneys of the country as if they were thugs and hooligans? Those who are objecting to judicial restoration are trying to have it both ways. They are either supporting democracy or they are supporting dictatorship, since without an independent judiciary, there is no democracy. We don’t have to wait for history to pass judgment on them. Their canard stands exposed. Some have equated the restoration of the judges with the impeachment of Pervez Musharraf. Since the latter requires a two-thirds majority in parliament, and since this seems to be beyond reach, the proponents of this view are suggesting that the former issue be tabled.

But removal of the judges, as many eminent jurists have argued, requires a simple majority which is clearly in hand. Some assert it can be ordered by the Cabinet. The impeachment issue is nothing but a diversion. The new political leadership has to deliver on the heavy mandate for change that the electorate has conferred on it or it will undermine its credibility.

The voters have declared that they want illegal acts committed by the Musharraf regime to be nullified. The new parliament will not be breaking any law if it restores the judiciary.

Some have argued that a restored judiciary will be beholden to the new political parties and will be unable to function in an unbiased fashion. Non sequiturs deserve no response. Others have argued that if Musharraf’s back is pushed to the wall, he will declare another emergency and may even proclaim martial law (but that would almost certainly lead to his handing over power to Gen Kayani).

If any purpose is to be served by the general elections and if the restoration of democracy is to carry any meaning, then all such political intimidation has to be faced down. There is no room for threats in a democracy. The Pakistan Resolution was not passed in 1940 so that the voice of the people would be muffled by the barrel of a gun 68 years later. A final argument is that Musharraf should be kept in power because he has given Pakistan the gift of democracy; that it would be ungrateful on the part of those who have won the elections to vote against their benefactor. This is tantamount to saying that the sacrifices made by the jurists and lawyers should be forgotten and that these brave men should be allowed to slip into history without a trace.

Such a travesty of justice should not be allowed to stand. It rewards extra-judicial tampering with the Constitution and sets a terrible precedent. It is time for the nation to turn a new leaf. March is always a good month for spring cleaning in the northern hemisphere so why should Pakistan be any exception? There is no turning back. The new order has arrived and the old order must perish. Democracy cannot co-exist with dictatorship. The new leadership should not fear the overhang of the previous regime. It derives its power from the people. The day it thinks its power derives from Musharraf, that day it will become powerless.

In the coming weeks, the forces that stand for change will duel it out on the political stage with the forces that stand for the status quo. This conflict evokes two French proverbs: “No army can stop an idea whose time has come”, which comes from Victor Hugo, and “The more things change, the more they stay the same”, from Alphonse Karr. Hopefully, in this encounter Hugo will trump Karr. Should that not happen, more sacrifices will be required to put democracy back on track and the country on the road to sustainable political and economic development.

The writer is the author of ‘Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan’.

faruqui@pacbell.net

A people’s policy paradigm

THE will of the people regarded as irrelevant by recurrent military regimes, lives on because the present is forever pregnant with its potential.

The people have spoken with stunning clarity to articulate their will: the PPP, PML-N and ANP which stand against extremists and for the downtrodden, for democracy, an independent judiciary and regional autonomy, have in the aggregate won the elections.

They have the ability to form strong coalition governments in the centre as well as in all four provinces. The outline of a future polity is clear. It would be defined by constitutional rule exorcised of the exigencies of dictatorship: a polity in which a sovereign parliament, an independent judiciary and an executive functioning according to the rule of law would guarantee the rights of all citizens and the provinces they inhabit; it would give voice to the oppressed by providing equal opportunity to all citizens, not just a few, to participate in the political and economic life of the country.

The outline of an economy denoted by the will of the people is also clear. It would be an economy of the people for the people: an economy characterised by an equitable growth process whereby poverty is overcome rapidly and the poor, through the actualising of their productive potential, acquire economic citizenship and contribute to the national economy.

The question that now arises is how such a polity and economy can be achieved. We would argue that this requires establishing democratic institutional structures in the polity, society and economy. An institution is a set of formal rules and informal norms which together with their enforcement mechanisms structure human interaction. Institutions in this sense need to be built in the polity, economy and society. Within the current Constitution that has been mauled by recurrent military interventions, within an economy distorted by the imperative to grant rents (unearned income) to the elite and within a society ruptured by the assault of obscurantist extremists.

Establishing democratic institutions means creating a set of rules at a formal level in each of these spheres, as well as informal norms within our culture and consciousness through which formal rules can be enforced. The purpose of these rules and enforcement mechanisms is to create the necessary constraints to state organisations, such as the military and executive authority, to ensure freedom, the rule of law and equality of economic opportunity for the people.

The Constitution embodies the will of the people to the extent that their core values are represented in it. Therefore it is the people, fully aware of their core values, mobilised and organised, who ultimately enforce the Constitution. We have seen this in the great sacrifice for democracy made by Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto when in receiving the violence of the extremists on her body she gave new life to the people and strength to their struggle for peace and democracy.

Another example is the recent civil society movement led by the lawyers. The emergence of heroes such as Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan and Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry bears testimony to the fact that through their actions they have articulated the aspirations of the people. These great sacrifices of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto and the leaders of the lawyers’ movement mobilised the popular will and determined both the results of the elections and the agenda of the main political parties.

The popular will is dramatically expressed through the passionate rationality of heroic individuals as we have seen recently. Yet the popular will is sustained by a myriad of civil society organisations, political parties and the media. Equally important are universities, poets and artists, who nurture creativity and self awareness in a people. It is these organisations that need to be strengthened. They enable a people to become conscious of what is essential to them. It is then that their forms of love, sacrifice and rebellion can be articulated. So it is that the people through their heroes, organisations and their collective action ensure that the Constitution is defended, preserved and protected.

The next question is how to create a people’s economy. A change in the policy paradigm is required: Establishing the institutions for enabling all citizens, not just the few, to actualise their productive potential and thereby sustain high GDP growth. Pakistan like other underdeveloped countries belongs to a ‘limited access social order’, where the elite preserves its rents (unearned income), through an institutional structure which excludes the majority of the people from both political power and economic wealth.

The incentive systems embodied in the institutional structure, restrict competition, constrain efficiency and innovation and hence prevent sustained economic growth. At the same time since most of the people are excluded from both the process of governance and growth, poverty is endemic.

The central economic challenge for Pakistan is to create the institutional structure for an economic democracy, which would enable equality of economic opportunity, allow merit based selection, competition and thereby efficiency, innovation and sustained growth. Economic policy would aim to create the institutional structure for providing access to a wide section of the population over credit, capital, land and high wage employment. Allocation of state resources should aim at providing high quality education, health and training infrastructure for the poor to enable them to increase their productivity, incomes, savings, and thereby engage in the investment process. In so doing they would enable a higher and more equitable GDP growth. Thus the poor would become the subject as well as the object of development.

Essential to Pakistan’s progress towards economic democracy would be to establish the institutional structure for sustaining democracy and the rule of law. As North has argued the polity is the fundamental basis of economic performance. This is because the incentive systems and the rules of the economic game are specified by the system of laws and regulations within the polity.

The people of Pakistan have made their own history in these elections by positing to the political parties as much as to the world that they too wish to live in freedom, and aspire for justice, peace and economic welfare. The challenge for national policy is to establish the institutional foundations for fulfilling these aspirations.

The writer is Distinguished Professor, Beaconhouse National University and Senior Fellow, PIDE.