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THREE down, two to go. A second consecutive government inching, muddling its way towards completion. And a democracy that feels, once again, unsatisfactory — stale, desultory, adrift.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Transition was supposed to lead to gradual improvement, stability opening up space for structural change and a deepening of constitutionalism and democracy.
Round one was the trickiest and, with it, the lowest expectations. Get to the finish line, a full term, in whatever shape and it would be success enough.
Zardari delivered that, and pretty much just that.
Round two was supposed to bring more. Five years removed from a military government, building on a historic achievement of a full term, the pace had to pick up. It hasn’t.
It’s easy enough to see where Nawaz has screwed up. He’s got it grossly wrong on militancy — the defining challenge of our times. On India, he seems to think hope is a strategy. And on the economy, neither jobs nor equity are a priority.
But, because of the democracy deficit, he could get all of those things wrong and still end up a success — if he figured out how to reduce the democracy deficit.
He hasn’t. And there’s nothing to suggest he will.
Three years, three terms, four decades of politics, six of life — only the incorrigibly optimistic can believe Nawaz will come around to reinventing himself now.
And that’s the problem: you can’t see continuity leading to the change that democracy is supposed to bring.
And the boys, well, when you’re into the domain of suggesting the boys can structurally improve democracy, the plot has already been lost.
It’s not just Nawaz. Zardari we’ve seen and been horrified by. Imran we haven’t tested, but there’s nothing to suggest he’d throw himself at the task of structural change.
And the boys, well, when you’re into the domain of suggesting the boys can structurally improve democracy, the plot has already been lost.
That’s it. Those are the four options we have. Unless a right-wing demagogue suddenly appears and drags us into a darkness unknown.
The problem seems to come down to pressure: there’s not enough of it in Pakistan. Not of the right kind anyway.
Sure, there’s a whole lot of political noise. Get Nawaz. Arrest Zardari. Mock Imran. That in and of itself isn’t bad — and it could even be good.
If public anger tapped into or stoked by the political class triggered structural democratic improvements by the political class, then we should all be out on our rooftops yelling.
But it doesn’t. Because the incentives aren’t there for structural change.
Two things the elected lot have got semi-right in this democratic iteration: electoralism and legislation.
The first means regular elections, preferably on schedule and if not on schedule, certainly only to bring another elected option in.
If you stretch it, even Imran fits in that description — with Nawaz and Zardari clearly doing so and the boys acquiescing by not toppling anyone.
The other is legislation: the political class appears to have figured out the need for it at both the federal and provincial levels.
So we’ve had the 18th, 20th and 22nd Amendments (the 19th and 21st were forced on parliament) and bits and bobs of legislation at the provincial level.
But after those two things, it’s all got a bit gummed up.
Because the next levels — reforming democratic institutions, tiering government for the benefit of the maximum number of people, giving authentic autonomy to the non-political elements of the executive — none of that appears to be on the agenda.
Not even if continuity creates the space and opportunity to allow those things to come onto the agenda.
We’ve got the politics right, but are still getting governance and institutions wrong — because there’s no pressure to force better choices.
What’s needed is fairly clear: build pressure from the outside, public pressure on the system to respond better to the needs of the people, and create ideas on the inside, pressure needing to be reflected in thoughtful ideas.
There are possible fixes, but they must be rooted in the system and the context of here. Installing outside ideas won’t work because there wouldn’t be any buy-in, both by the public and the representatives who are to make the ideas work.
So, where can change come from?
The longer this goes on, the more this continuity business stutters, there appear to be only two local ideas with potential for significant acceptance: shorter terms — four years instead of five — and term limits for party officeholders.
Neither will be a silver bullet; there’s too much stasis in the system.
But as the continuity experiment is demonstrating, the third year of government is essentially a wasted year, with none evolved enough yet to take advantage of governance space.
May as well cut it out and get to a four-year system, speeding up the verdict of the electorate — and hence the possibility of democratic pressure to change.
And term limits for party officeholders may not mean much when power inside parties is not aligned with who controls which office — inside the party or the state itself.
See, Zardari as regent of the PPP and all too happy to surrender his presidential powers.
But churn inside parties could help new ideas come to the fore, catching the eye of leaderships needing to present fresh ideas to a public they have to go to more regularly.
The problem is obvious — if meaningful change isn’t on the political agenda, then how do you get onto the political agenda something that will introduce pressure for meaningful change?
Pakistan, as ever, looks set to remain Pakistan.
The writer is a member of staff.
Twitter: @cyalm
Published in Dawn, June 19th, 2016
