The rough road to the polls

“IN OUR SLEEP, pain which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God” — Aeschylus.

THE advent of elections and constitutional reforms is to be viewed against the background of developments since 1989 as well as since 1947. Our ruling classes, since the inception of the new state, have never tackled constitution-making with the commitment and seriousness it deserved. It is less difficult to secure adoption of a constitution consecrated with consensus in the initial years of independence when national fervour prevails and partisanship is slumbering.

In the intervening period of more than fifty years, constitutions have been abrogated, amended, or otherwise honoured more in the breach. Recognizing full well that there is no viable alternative to democracy, we are rightly engaged in healing a bruised democracy loaded with historical baggage.

This is not intended as a counsel of despair but as an admonition to probe the earth and see where our main roots are. We have to abandon the search for simplistic solutions and take the high road to the supremacy of elected authority tempered by checks and balances.

As the country is getting ready for elections in October to establish a sustainable democracy, it is witnessing an impassioned debate on the substance and timing of changes in the 1973 Constitution. The debate needs to acquire depth and perspective by moving beyond the forms of democracy to examining the spirit with which they should be infused. The precept of the oracle of Delphi Oracle, ‘Know Thyself’ — which implies that if a man really knew himself and his limitations, he would curb his ambitions and pride — has meaning and value for our political life.

One would like to dwell upon the cultural dimensions of democracy — the habits of thinking indispensable for sustaining democracy and delivering public good. The choice is not between forms of democracy and its spirit; the challenge is to promote a fusion of the two by welding them into an effectual whole.

A preliminary comment to clear the decks for a proper understanding of political culture is in order. I would argue that the expression ‘democratization’, which sheds light on the dynamics of the political process, is to be preferred to ‘establishment of democracy’. Democratization views government of the people, by the people, and for the people as an unfolding process, not as an irreversible condition.

The founding fathers in the United States had a prescient realization of the fragility of the democratic experiment and of the prime necessity of strengthening institutions and leaving behind healthy precedents for succeeding generations.

Walt Whitman wrote this concerning democracy in America: “There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country if the people lose the confidence in themselves — and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance. Tyranny may always enter — there is no charm, no bar against it — the only bar against it is a large resolute breed of men.”

The essence of a political culture in a sustainable democracy lies in the maintenance of a balance between rights and duties. In our land, the preponderant emphasis is on rights. A deeper look reveals that duties come prior to rights and require reorientation in our thinking. Immanuel Kant, the great eighteenth century philosopher, viewed duty as the basis of rights and justice. Since we all have equal rights in democracy, the inference is unmistakable that we all have equal duties.

Active citizenship requires performance of duties to one another and creating conditions for fulfillment of rights. A fundamental disequilibrium between rights and duties creates a crisis of trust in a society and a culture of suspicion. Trust is a scarce commodity in Pakistan and reflects an inability in people to work together for common purposes within institutional frameworks.

Creativity finds expressions in diversity. Federal democracy is fertilized by the concept of unity in diversity. Tolerance is visibly on a downward slope fostering a climate of extremist thinking and of absolutism and finality. Our social and economic indicators — good governance and poverty reduction — have to move upwards rapidly. An increase in the number of poor living on less than a dollar a day and a shrinking middle class erodes the social roots of democracy. Democracy thrives on dialogue invigorated by receptiveness to differing viewpoints without outright rejectionism. Real truth emerges from the competition of ideas in the marketplace. Sophocles’ Antigone says: “I was not born to share men’s hatred but their love.”

For democracy to be sustainable and fruitful, active and widespread participation of the public is extremely important. One of the indisputably reliable signs of involvement is the voter turnout on the election day. We have witnessed in the 1990s a slump in votes cast to elect representatives of the broad masses to the assemblies. The polls registered a steep decline from around 70 per cent in 1971 to less than 30 per cent in contests held in the 1990s. On the other hand, recent elections in Bangladesh and Iran stirred great excitement among their voters and this was reflected in turnouts as high as 70 per cent.

We have the privileged and the exploited in Pakistan and inequality between them fosters almost everywhere spirited involvement in competitive politics. This political strife creates pressures for a high level of participation in balloting in emerging democracies. The question arises that why are those who are being exploited, and who should seek a change in the status quo, withdrawing from the political process and becoming resigned to their misery instead of exercising their fundamental right to vote. The unassailable explanation is that voters in the millions, the main stakeholders in a democracy, are, by and large, disillusioned by the too many high-sounding words and the too few actions that match them.

We should reverse this negative trend in the October election and raise the participation of voters to above 50 per cent by grassroots and issue-centered campaigning and by ensuring fairness at the polls.

A democratic government rests on the strong foundation of compromise. It remains engaged in a dynamic search of the vital centre to pitch a big tent and to keep the ship of state on an even keel. Unlike the exercise of despotic power, compromise between ideals and material necessity enhances its capacity to penetrate society and leads to the sharing of power and consensual governance. Enduring democracy is a positive sum game resting on the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean, defining virtue as the midway point between two extremes, each of which carries the stigma of vice. Unhappily, in view of our fascination with myths, our leadership plumps for ‘winner-take-all’ brand of politics and often indulges in roiling politics by making high-pitched emotional appeals to the gullible public. The memorable lines of William Yeats come to mind:

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

It is important to make a distinction between politics and politicking with a view to fully understanding intent and spirit of democracy. Politicking involves treatment of politics in its manifestation as a game to be manipulated by playing on the credulity of voters, by relaying messages of instantaneous and painless improvement in their conditions with no intention of follow-up action, by sleight of hand and recourse to deception disguised as cleverness.

Politics, which undeniably has its blemishes, is mainly concerned in its substantive aspects with education and mobilization of public opinion and seeking a mandate for realizing the goal of good governance and reanimation of nationhood with its possibilities for liberty, justice and progress. We know that angels do not dwell in politics.

To sum up, we remain unrepentant in our preference for democracy as the choice of human reason and human dignity but are flashing warning signals lest we are duped by its antics into forsaking its substance and authentic spirit.

Charisma is the spoiler of democracy and rings the death toll of institutions, Heroic leadership leaves behind a legacy of unfulfilled hopes and a crisis of succession. Institution-building rooted in consensus is the signature of sustainable democracy in our country.

Writer’s e-mail:karachi@sensei-international.com

A case of libel

ONE COULD be forgiven for thinking that the day was long past when an American could be locked up for publishing an untruth about a public official. But recently, a jury in Kansas City, Kan., convicted a newspaper, its publisher and its editor for the crime of libeling the mayor. The publication’s behavior appears to have been irresponsible, and a civil libel suit seeking damages might well have been appropriate. But the idea of criminally prosecuting speech that does not endanger anyone is a creature of an earlier time. Though prosecutions under criminal libel laws are exceedingly rare, several states have such laws on the books. It is past time for them to go.

The Kansas case began when a gadfly tabloid called the New Observer published a series of articles alleging that Carol Marinovich, mayor of the unified government of Kansas City and neighboring Wyandotte County, was violating the law’s residency requirement by not living in town. This was false and verifiably so. And had Ms. Marinovich sued, she might well have won a judgment. Instead, however, a politically allied district attorney brought a criminal case under Kansas’ rarely used criminal defamation law _ and last month a jury convicted on several misdemeanor accounts.

Newspapers shouldn’t knowingly publish harmful falsehoods; neither should anyone else. But the criminal law is the wrong vehicle to resolve even the worst abuses of this type. Criminal libel laws were designed originally as a way to prevent dueling; certain speech, even if true, was regarded as so inflammatory that men of honor would feel duty-bound to respond violently unless the state took action in their place.

Prosecutions such as this are particularly anomalous given the fact that the court has broadly protected even categories of speech that may be truly dangerous. Urging violence can only be prosecuted if it is likely to produce lawless action imminently, for example, and threats in public discourse have to be clear before they are beyond protection under the First Amendment. —The Washington Post

Constitutional confusion: myths and shibboleths

THERE has been a great deal of vituperative writing on the proposed challenges to the Constitution amounting occasionally to downright abuse. The accepted mythology in Pakistan seems to be that the so-called Westminster model as currently practised in the UK represents the ideal form of government. Had this been accepted throughout the world, the dozen or so countries in the European Union, which are also democracies and reasonably successful ones, would have adopted the British system without change.

It is clear that this has not happened. All of them have slightly different constitutions. Therefore, the ideal of the British parliamentary system is a snare and a delusion. The creation of effective representative government has to be tailored according to the perceptions of the people being governed and the quality of the people forming the government.

The other myth is that somehow the 1973 Constitution is sacrosanct. Had it been so its originator, Mr Bhutto would not have found it necessary to have amended it seven times during his own tenure in power. In all discussions a great deal of emphasis has been placed on federalism upon which our Constitution is assumed to have been based. It is very strange that in the process of amending the Constitution only the federal parliament (the National Assembly plus Senate) is involved.

There is no provision for referring the matter to the federating provinces. Pakistan in particular being a somewhat ethnically diverse society requires that before any amendment to the Constitution is made, the constituting provinces must also give their consent. Consent to changes in the Constitution generally requires a two-thirds majority of a certain proportion of the federating units. As has been witnessed, during the tenure of Nawaz Sharif the Constitution of Pakistan can be amended within five minutes if the government has an adequate majority in the national parliament (National Assembly plus the Senate).

A great deal of adverse comment went on about the Eighth Amendment — that is, Article 58(2)(B) which empowered the president to dismiss the prime minister and dissolve the National Assembly. In effect, it was a somewhat blunt instrument. During discussions with Mr Ghulam Ishaque, who was then president, I expressed a view as to why he does not advise the prime minister (Nawaz Sharif) to behave better. His rather matter of fact reply was that the previous one (Benazir Bhutto) at least listened — this one Nawaz Sharif) doesn’t even listen. The net result is now history. Mr Ishaque dismissed the government of Mr Sharif, the Supreme Court reversed his decision and finally the army intervened and the COAS, Gen. Kakar, sent both the president and the prime minister packing.

As far as the Westminster model is concerned, people who write about it do not seem to know even the rudiments of British history. To assist their thinking, permit me to provide an encapsulated version. The direction which constitutional development took in England was a gradual reduction in the power of the monarch and its transfer to elected representatives.

The process took about 700 years. It started with Magna Carta in 1215 when the barons imposed some limits on the power of King John. The King’s party and the baron’s party continued to bicker until it came to open war and the King’s party was defeated by Simon de Montfort at the battle of Lewes in 1264. In 1265 at the battle of Evesham, the barons were defeated and Simon de Montfort was killed. However, the lesson that the King of England must reign under the law was accepted by Edward I. The Kings, however, remained strong under the succeeding Edwards, I and III. They were capable and successful monarchs. However, Edward II was murdered by some of his nobles because his conduct as king was considered unbecoming.

Because of some dispute over succession after the death of Edward III the nobles decided to become king-makers and we had the Wars of the Roses until the end of the fifteenth century when Henry Owen Tudor, a Welshman, founded the Tudor dynasty. The three main Tudors, Henry VII, VIII and Elizabeth, ruled with a strong hand but did not have any means of military suppression at their disposal. It was their subjects who had great regard and affection for their monarchs which permitted them to separate the heads from the bodies of people who happened to annoy them. Their main concern towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign was the question of succession.

The Chancellor of England managed to resolve the issue by getting agreement that James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary Queen of Scots, and (the unfortunate) Darnley would rule as James I. While James knew Scotland, he did not know much about England. Charles I, his son, did not know either. Because of illusions of divine right he got into a fight with parliament that ended with the separation of his head from the rest of his body in 1649. Thereafter England was governed by a commoner for the next ten years. It is said to represent the victory of the Commons over the Lords but was not translated into practice. To obtain a decisive supremacy over the House of Lords the Commons had to wait another two hundred and fifty years.

On the death of Oliver Cromwell, the English decided to recall the son of Charles I and make him their king as Charles II. He was rather easygoing and preferred dogs and mistresses to the serious issues of government. Since he was unable to raise taxes, he supplemented his income with a stipend from the king of France. He was sensible enough to live as a Protestant but when he was about to meet his Maker, to save his soul, he chose to die as a Catholic. He was succeeded by his brother, James II, who came to grief trying to re-convert England back to Catholicism. The so-called bloodless revolution established a kind of supremacy of Parliament over the Crown. When he realized that the attempt had failed he ran away to France in 1688. Some thirty years later, the Stuart dynasty ended with Queen Anne.

Thereafter, the British decided to get the German prince from Hanover who could not speak English as their own King George I. This peculiarity led to the accelerated development of the office of prime minister. The impression that the House of Lords is an inconsequential body is also one of the myths of recent thought. The hereditary peers continued to lord it over England for most of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. For much of Britain’s history the House of Lords was, in practice, in no way inferior to the House of Commons.

Because of demographic changes over time, a serious discrepancy occurred in parliamentary constituencies. The members returned to Parliament were not in accordance with the distribution of the enfranchised population. As a result, some constituencies with very few voters returned a member. These were referred to as “rotten boroughs”, controlled by influential people. This led to popular agitation accompanied by bloodshed — the “Peterloo” massacre. The seats of Parliament were re-allocated and the “rotten boroughs” perished in 1831. The Reform Act of 1832 more or less simultaneously enfranchised a much larger proportion of the population. The next major reform extending the franchise further took place in 1867 and was followed by others. Adult franchise was finally achieved in 1929 when women were given “the vote.”

A clash between the Lords and the Commons occurred in the beginning of the twentieth century and the House of Lords was diminished in power by the king when he sided with the Commons in a dispute over a money bill. The House of Lords could no longer hold up a money bill. This is what has led to the belief that the upper house of parliament must be weaker than the lower house, and it should have no say in legislation pertaining to the budget.

To be concluded

Accounting reform

Now that President Bush has signed a tough measure to reform accounting practices and make outright corporate fraud easier to detect and punish, on to subtler but still necessary stuff. To reassure investors both big and small that what they see is what they get, the distortions caused by overuse of stock options must be eliminated.

Stock options, when properly focused, can put management and workers in tune with shareholders’ wishes by sharing some of the wealth created when the stock price rises.

The New York Stock Exchange is heading toward adoption of a requirement that member companies submit stock option plans to shareholder votes. It’s an important step because executive pay packages too often are designed by corporate boards that take their marching orders from the very executives who stand to benefit.b —The Washington Post