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ON June 23, the British public will vote on whether or not to remain in the European Union. Brexit, as it has been termed, is widely considered to be the major political risk of the year, with serious ramifications for the British economy and the stability of the EU going forward. Arguments for and against Brexit range from the political to the passionate, and as the date approaches, it’s getting harder to tell what the outcome is likely to be.
It is a testament to how easily history and data can be manipulated that both campaigns to remain in and leave the EU can draw on facts and stats to support their argument. In recent weeks, all these contradictory arguments have been made, with varying degrees of success: the UK is a European country; it is an independent island. British history is intertwined with that of the continent; the Brits have nothing in common with Europeans. Brexit will mark the beginning of the end of the EU; a post-Brexit EU will emerge stronger and more unified. The UK is safer in the union; terrorists will be stymied by closed borders.
Arguably the most interesting debate to emerge from the chaos is about the democratic value of a referendum. Many in the UK are livid that Prime Minister David Cameron even put such a serious question to the public, for whom this is largely a debate about immigration. The argument is that Britain’s relationship with the EU and the nuanced ways in which it impacts policies and the economy are well beyond the comprehension of average voters, who should not be trusted to make a sound choice. The citizenry has chosen representatives who are paid good taxpayer money to do the research and make tough decision on the public’s behalf. A referendum is just lazy politics.
The Brexit chaos has led to some interesting questions.
The argument works in theory if not in practice. Many MPs are no more qualified to understand the economic and legal intricacies. And they are, first and foremost, politicians. The referendum is after all about British politics. It is Cameron’s bid to silence Eurosceptics who threaten to divide the Conservative Party; Boris Johnson’s bid to position himself as the prime minister of a post-Brexit UK; Nigel Farage’s bid to drag the far right into the centre of British politics.
The argument is also a slippery slope away from authoritarian tendencies: I will take decisions on behalf of my people because I know better than them, those hapless souls. Such rhetoric has propped up strongmen and helped to justify the worst kinds of oppression, marginalisation and lack of inclusivity. And it inevitably serves rent-seeking and crony capitalism of the worst kind. The choices made will usually benefit the commercial and political interests of those imposing them.
What lesson could Pakistan take from all this? Ours is a constitutional democracy, but there is widespread sentiment that the public is not yet ‘ready’ for such governance. This explains the benevolent dictatorships and mucky civilian rule that have defined our history. Each time Pakistan’s liberal elite support military intervention in the public sphere, they make the argument that democracy cannot work in Pakistan because the people are not ‘ready’ — not educated enough, too enmeshed in the local, in kinship, in ethnicity, to think big.
Developments in recent years — particularly around the role of religion in the Pakistani state — have particularly exacerbated this kind of thinking. If anything were put to a referendum in Pakistan, we would likely end up in an intolerant theocracy. The top-down counterterrorism initiatives of the past two years are in many ways a response to the radicalisation of society and an attempt to shift the debate away from religion to the economy. Forget ideology, think infrastructure — the hope is that the spoils of CPEC will distract the polity from their righteous zeal.
Such thinking raises the question: how educated is educated enough? Those opposed to the Brexit referendum believe the British public is not educated enough. At home, the ruling establishment has decided that the Pakistani public is not educated enough. (Incidentally, the Swiss are deemed to be educated enough — Switzerland has a direct democracy system defined by frequent referendums; referendums on constitutional changes are mandatory.)
Perhaps a better way to consider the issue is to think about how invested citizens are in their state. Do they have the right relationship developed through a quid pro quo of tax payments and service delivery? Is there a sense of accountability? Do those making decisions believe themselves to be government ‘servants’ or an above-the-law political elite? In other words, do people trust their representatives?
The differing opinions about the merits of referendums may ultimately say more about the state of governance than the qualifications of the public.
The writer is a freelance journalist.
Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2016
