AS high inflation and job losses ravage the masses, our uncaring elites hogging key state institutions are fighting feuds so intense that one fears a state meltdown. These ugly feuds show that in 75 years, we have failed to craft democratic institutions that can mediate societal conflicts via the rule of law.

Pakistan was born out of elite Muslim fears about Hindu-majority rule. It wasn’t a coherent nation in 1947 but many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that could, however, be put together by the expert hands of democracy to form one coherent picture of a nation.

Instead, the elites sent a bulldozer to put them together, crushing them into even smaller pieces. Strong economies emerge in strong states which are built on the base of coherent nations formed via democratic rule. But the same elites who feared Hindu-majority rule before 1947 later feared even Muslim-majority rule. So, they nixed democracy and thus a coherent nation and a strong state and economy.

Only twice briefly did democratic evolution occur — in 1972-73 and 2008-2018. The first era was undercut by its own architect, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, by his autocratic rule which let our bigger autocrats regain power.

The second era saw progress on key axes of democratic development: devolution, fair sharing of resources, smooth civilian power transfer, institutional autonomy and national integration through the 18th Amendment, the eighth NFC Award, fair polls in 2013, the Fata merger, and the 2017 poll reforms.

There were security gains against terrorism, balanced ties with China and West, talks with India, progressive social laws and the start of CPEC though badly managed. Even by regional Indian standards, these pluses are small. Yet they outdid those in all our other eras.

Oddly, all this was done not by non-civilian forces that always promise progress falsely but by deeply flawed civilians in the PML-N, PPP etc. Oddly too, the party that paints itself as much better, PTI, had almost no role in it and in fact undercut this evolution via its 2014 dharna and again in 2018 through allegedly rigged polls.

The PTI did worse than PML-N in all domains: economic, political, social, security and foreign. But the rot started by the Pindi-PTI hybrid regime is so deep that even PDM is following the PTI path of autocratic misrule, instead of its own 2008-2018 path.

Today, the nation is staring into the bottomless pit of a huge abyss as state institutions have become arenas for elite feuds and the economy is in free fall.

One fears cataclysmic actions by institutions against each other — executive against judiciary or vice versa — and even within. Strangely, the institution in Pindi mostly responsible for this mess is acting aloof, perhaps letting civilians create such a mess that it can again present itself as the sole saviour. Or perhaps, stung by its failed hybrid play, it is unsure of what to do. Just as the world catches a cold when the US sneezes, Pakistan sees chaos when the establishment experiences uncertainty. But it may yet assert itself to impose an artificial order that averts immediate meltdown.

Many naively think elections will give stability and progress. Elections must certainly be held on time, but they will not heal the underlying societal fault lines which pit civilian upper-middle-class elites (the PTI and sections of judiciary and media) against the landed and business elites with the military middle-class elites.

The best outcome would be the PDM following the Congress model to appoint a competent cabinet from within its ranks while the Sharifs and Zardaris run their parties. But even so, governance would fall well short of the visionary and dy­­namic one needed to solve our multiple problems as those within the PDM and other parties seem to lack the required capability.

It’s also unlikely that PDM will opt for this model given the many ambitious candidates in both families. So, the best outcome is neither good enough nor very likely. But so bad is our situation that the two more likely outcomes will cause even more misrule.

A PDM regime run by family patriarchs will fail again. But a PTI win will be even worse as it is a machine built not to rule well but promote only slick social media campaigns, conflict and drama and misrule. This coupled with its internal divisions, Imran Khan’s divisive and anarchist mindset and his poor ties with key local and global power brokers mean that its second era will be far worse than its first one where Pindi’s steadying hand kept it from falling.

Elections may only serve as a brief intermission after which the movie of elite feuds and misrule resumes. Its ending can only be tragic.

The writer is a political economist with a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

murtazaniaz@yahoo.com

Twitter: @NiazMurtaza2

Published in Dawn, April 4th, 2023