WHAT did the image intend to convey? Perhaps the PML-N brain trust believed that a picture of a meeting between the prime minister and his top civilian aides to discuss security matters would suggest a hands-on political leadership that is stable and mature. Instead, a very different signal has been sent. In a week in which the PML-N has been under attack on the parliamentary front, a strong, democratic signal from the prime minister would have been welcome. A meeting of the federal cabinet — the very constitutional forum designed to handle discussions such as the one presided over by the prime minister on Friday and a forum that has not been convened in half a year — should have been the only democratic option. But the PML-N does not appear to be interested in institutional strengthening. Only when the government is in trouble and needs to remind others of the constitutional separation of powers or the proper institutional roles does the PML-N leadership appear to remember core democratic institutions.

Has all hope for institutional reforms in the short-term been extinguished? Part of the problem is parliament itself — most mainstream parties appear to have accepted the primacy of a democratic mandate, but not gone beyond the electoral aspects of democracy. If Senator Aitzaz Ahsan’s taunts about the federal cabinet have been uncomfortably close to the truth, what of the Sindh cabinet, which for all intents and purposes appears to be controlled remotely from Dubai? Even more egregiously, during the life of the last parliament, the political centre of the country was the presidency, where the PPP boss Asif Ali Zardari had taken up residence. Similarly, the PTI is quick to pounce on the PML-N’s parliamentary and democratic missteps, but how effective and empowered is the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly? As for parliament itself, the PTI chief, Imran Khan, still appears to have very little regard for its processes. Rare is the parliamentary day that Mr Khan makes an appearance in the National Assembly.

Yet, it is the federal government on whom the greatest democratic responsibility falls. The tendency of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to centralise power, restrict access to himself and channel most decision-making through no more than a handful of aides and long-standing political allies tends to have a corrosive effect far beyond the corridors of power in Islamabad. With the PML-N itself, many of the next generation of leaders have been reduced to trying to desperately gain access to a chosen few. Even in the federal cabinet, full ministers with what would otherwise be considered meaningful portfolios can do no more than try and catch the attention of Ishaq Dar or a bureaucrat in the Prime Minister’s Office. What Mr Sharif does not appear to realise is that democracy is strengthened not just by the decisions made, but the manner and forums in which they are made.

Published in Dawn, January 31st, 2016