THE day this article appears in this newspaper, the country`s legislators will be voting for the next president of Pakistan.

This is our highest constitutional position, and the incumbent represents the federation. With this election, the democratic edifice will be in place the provincial and national assemblies and the Senate will, hopefully, provide the framework for an effective, popular government.

However, while we have the appearance and the paraphernalia of democracy, we are very far from its essence. If you want to know how far, just look at the recent discussion in the Senate about the brutal murders of three young women in Balochistan. These unfortunate girls were driven away to a remote spot, shot and buried while still alive — (the police have a different version). While the details are still fuzzy, not even the police now deny that the crime was committed, although it took them six weeks and a public outcry to launch an investigation.

Such crimes are not unique to Pakistan, but only here could a senator actually be shameless enough to get up on the floor of the Senate and defend this barbaric act. The Balochistan National Party claims to be a secular, progressive party and Israrullah Zehri is one of its leading lights. And yet, he resolutely justified the murders as part of his `tribal traditions` when the matter was first brought up in the Senate.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time a gruesome murder has featured in the Senate, as Beena Sarwar reminded us in her column for an English-language daily. In April 1999, Samia Sarwar decided she could not live with her husband any longer, and wanted a divorce. Although religious custom and the law of the land gave her this right, she had to flee from Peshawar to escape her parents` wrath. She sought shelter in a women`s home run by Asma Jehangir and Hina Jilani, and reluctantly agreed to meet her mother at their law offices. The mother walked in with a male servant who shot Samia dead and was then killed by a policeman.

No legal action was taken against the victim`s parents as her father was a businessman and president of the Peshawar chamber of commerce, and her mother a well-known doctor. When Iqbal Haider, the lawyer and human rights activist, moved a resolution in the Senate to prosecute the parents, he was assaulted by senators from the NWFP, and assailed by Ajmal Khattak, a senior member of the Awami National Party, another party with secular credentials. Only four senators, including Aitzaz Ahsan, supported him; over 20, including presidential candidate Mushahid Hussain, voted against the resolution.

These two incidents are just the tip of the iceberg everyday, women across the country are subjected to revolting crimes that are accepted by society as `part of our tradition`. Although several politicians have denounced Senator Zehri`s claim, the sad fact is that crimes against women ranging from vani to karo-kari are rooted in the local culture, and are condoned by society. Those indulging in `honour killing` are seldom prosecuted, and more often than not, tribal jirgas and village elders give these criminals a moral justification for their acts.

It is said that only education will rid us of these archaic and barbaric attitudes. However, as we have seen, highly educated people are often the ones justifying these violent customs that target women. I suppose Senator Zehri is literate; and I know for a fact that Senator Mushahid Hussain is. So if people like them are not willing to condemn such misogynistic behaviour, we cannot really expect uneducated tribesmen to respect women.

In this recent incident in Balochistan, the silence of the local administration and the provincial government is all the more shocking as it happened at a time when the PPP is in at least nominal charge. For the party led for all these years by Benazir Bhutto not to take a clear position is deeply saddening. Had she been alive, I am sure there would have been a swifter and sharper response to the atrocity.

Today, we are rightly concerned about the threat the Taliban and their extremist partners in crime pose to Pakistan. However, women had been subjected to violence long before the emergence of the Taliban. It is the notion that somehow, women are the property of men, and therefore beyond the protection of the state, that is deeply ingrained in our patriarchal society.

All too often, this attitude is taken abroad by migrants where it clashes with liberal notions of equality for women. Cases of `honour killing` trigger revulsion and occasional legal action in the West, but Muslims go on defending these crimes on the basis of religious and social sanction.

Clearly, to talk of democracy when half the population is locked up and marginalised is to delude ourselves. When we survey the world, we find that most Muslim countries continue to be largely backward, irrespective of the petro-dollars some of them are raking in. In terms of our contribution to global progress, we are at the very bottom. Could it be that a major factor in our backwardness is our attitude towards women? Muslim countries that have done relatively well (Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia) have a better record on gender equality than many Arab states, as well as tribal and feudal societies like Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Unfortunately, we have been unable to translate our democratic aspirations into a social transformation. In fact, instead of moving forward, we have seen archaic tribal practices being justified by educated people. In spite of all the lofty talk of social progress from our leaders, we have seen a steady regression.

Other countries have had to cope with savage medieval customs as well. But most of them enacted progressive legislation, and enforced it vigorously. While Pakistan has laws in place, they are seldom used to prosecute criminals. Unless there is a public outcry, the administration remains a silent spectator, and even progressive politicians prefer to sit on the fence.

Clearly, nothing will change until the government acquires the spine to enforce the law. But it takes more than an election to gather the resolve and the political will to fight social injustice and brutality. In much of Pakistan, women are not even allowed to vote, and until they do, their voices will not be heard by the powerful. But until they are, we cannot claim to be a democracy.

irfanhusain@gmail.com