ISLAMABAD: “Politicians in Pakistan don’t even have the capacity to properly rig elections; they have to rely on the agencies for that. This is how helpless political parties seem to be in front of military establishment,” Awami National Party leader Afrasiab Khattak said on Thursday.

Speaking at ‘Democracy: For the People or in Spite of Them’, a seminar organised by the Awami Workers Party (AWP) at the National Press Club, the former senator used the example to highlight just how incapacitated politicians were in the face of the military.

To illustrate his point, Mr Khattak quoted the example of former military ruler, retired General Pervez Musharraf, who had once mentioned that Imran Khan was demanding 100 seats from him, but that he (Musharraf) was only willing to give him 10 seats.

“Musharraf is not capable of winning a single seat if he contested the election himself. He negotiated with Imran Khan because he knew the agencies would engineer the elections for him,” he said.

Talking about the state of democracy in Pakistan, he said that the system in the country was a “controlled democracy”, adding that a certain group was running the system at the behest of the ‘state’.

“How can the Afghan ambassador be summoned to General Headquarters (GHQ) in a democratic system? Now, apex committees are being forced on the district level; what will be the function of the local government system now?” he asked.

Mr Khattak also highlighted the widening divide between the rich and poor. He also criticised the performance and policies of government, saying that it was focusing on development while the tree of extremism was continuing to grow.

“We claim that Operation Zarb-i-Azb achieved all its targets, so then why was Waziristan bombarded a few days ago? How a country bomb its own people; many innocents also die along with terrorists in such actions,” he said.

Anchorperson Murtaza Solangi said that political parties had been weakened over the years because they did not focus on their party structure and organisation.

“There is a controlled democracy; political parties are not able to resist dictators. Moreover political parties don’t have adequate representation of the poor. It is the poor, in fact, who can put up a resistance against dictatorship because they have nothing to lose,” he said.

AWP’s Ismat Shahjehan said that it had become routine for political parties and governments to blame Gen Ziaul Haq for all issues, from social problems regarding women to the army’s control over democracy.

“But even political parties who got into government did nothing to address these issues. Even a weak person can show resistance like Cuba never surrendered against the US. In Pakistan, however, political parties have stopped putting up resistance,” she said.

President of AWP Punjab Aasim Sajjad said political culture has declined in the country and no one was ready to stand for the democracy.

“It is because democratic forces do not stand for the rights of people. On the other hand the politics of ideology has been declined in the country,” he said.

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2017