Democracy is Dead! Long Live Democracy!!

The tragic death of Benazir Bhutto has revitalized concerns over the fate of democracy in Pakistan. The greatest fear is that the military and its supporters will conveniently interpret Bhutto’s assassination as the death of democracy itself. They will point to this tragic event as a justification for “controlled democracy” and “enlightened moderation,” which recent developments have shown are nothing more than euphemisms for dictatorship and elite rule. Musharraf and his supporters will claim that there are no viable democratic alternatives- it is now a choice between him and the extremists. Once again, the argument will be made that until we can groom a civil populace and an equally civil political leadership, we must content ourselves with “liberal” dictators. Supporters of dictatorship are often heard asking who should rule instead of Musharraf, forgetting that democratic procedures ensure that nobody rules as such. They are always lamenting the lack of political leadership in Pakistan, forgetting that political leadership itself emerges through democratic processes. Democracy, in their world view, is a final utopia in which Pakistan may one day nestle, not a necessary means to achieve social, political and economic justice.

Musharraf supporters frequently argue that The Emergency is not the suspension of democracy because “genuine” democracy has never existed in Pakistan, or the oft-heard, “Pakistan has always been in a state of emergency.” This seemingly pessimistic view of Pakistani society is actually underpinned by a romantic, idealized notion of what democracy is and should look like. In these arguments, “genuine” democracy can only be brought about by a complete overhaul of the Pakistani political and social landscape; “People have to be educated;” “feudalism has to be abolished,” “markets have to be opened,” “Islam has to be reformed.” Democracy, they suggest, brings to power elements that are insufficiently liberal and modern, elements that are trapped in backward mentalities and incapable of making their own judgments. The project of democratizing must be suspended till such a time when the populace and their representatives are educated and reformed. “Genuine” democracy, it is argued, can only be brought about through Musharraf’s liberal dictatorship.

It is clear that this political discourse rests on the assumption that our people, the Pakistani people, are incapable of controlling their own political destinies. Like naïve children, they are easily recruited into reactionary political projects. They are either blindly loyal to their feudal lords or easily manipulated by the ploys of Mullahs. The fault of course lies with the people and their representatives. Why our democracy would be a “spurious” one, while other democracies are “genuine” and which if any democracies in the world are genuine remains a mystery (India? U.S.? Kenya? Britain?). Some argue that the difficulty of establishing democracy in Pakistan can be explained by our perpetual identity crisis, “we don’t know who we really are.” This “identity crisis” apparently summarizes our lack of social cohesion and our penchant for violent confrontation. The demands for cultural, political and economic autonomy coming from different sectors of Pakistani society are explained away by some inherent and inescapable aspect of the Pakistani populace. This of course means that without military rule or at least the presence of the military in politics, Pakistan would disintegrate. The military has long fostered the impression that it is the only institution capable of maintaining the integrity and unity of the Pakistani state. It maintains this unity, so the argument goes, by containing the violent impulses and intractable differences that lurk under the surface. It is not surprising then that the military interprets any critique of it as an attack on the very idea of Pakistani nationhood. Wasn’t it for Pakistan that Musharraf declared emergency?

But, clearly somewhere “out there,” mostly in the West, there are countries which have “genuine” democracy, countries that are not burdened by this permanent “identity crisis,” countries where the citizenry is equipped to make the correct political decisions. This “genuine” democracy may not be our “present” but it is an ultimate goal; a goal that they argue can only be realized through liberal dictatorship. It is unclear when the population will be ready for democracy. Sixty years into Pakistan and our citizens are still not ready. This genuine democracy is unrealizable; it is a project to divert our people away from all that they value towards all that a small, elite segment of the population values. Maybe Pakistan will be ready for democracy when these people shed their backward attachments, when they realize that public morality is dictated only by the fashion houses and ad agencies in London and New York, or when they accept that democratic processes should not be used to demand a change in the distribution of power.

Controlled democracy is both a project of domesticating the population through the arms of a paternal state and a façade for foreign observers. We all know that it will never challenge the imperatives of military rule. Controlled democracy is buttressed by the “doctrine of necessity,” invented to offset the demands for ethnic and provincial autonomy, and the newly conjured “enlightened moderation.” It is obvious that these are new devices to secure the status quo and put off the project of decentralizing and democratizing power. Sadly, it is the status quo that generates the very violence and instability for which liberal dictatorship claims to be the remedy. And so we go round and round.

All societies have idealized models towards which they strive. There is nothing inherently wrong with having such models, but there are times when these models are put to insidious if not outright predatory ends (communism’s permanent revolution comes to mind). This idealized democracy with its ideal populace and ideal leadership is precisely this kind of romantic justification for elite rule and dictatorship. The tragic situation that Pakistan finds itself in does not spring from some “identity crisis” inherent to the people of Pakistan. The fragmentation of the Pakistani nation along ethnic, sectarian and religious lines occurs primarily because of the unwillingness on the part of military and business elites to share power and decision making with those that they consider insufficiently modern. Interestingly, Musharraf and his supporters have severed the idea of “democracy” from that of “modernity” and pitted them against one another. The liberal notion of popular sovereignty, the powerful idea that when people are allowed to choose their own political representatives and control their own political destinies they will learn to compromise with one another and even to respect one another's differences is one of the defining features of the modern world. This necessary and powerful idea has been renounced by those that have assumed the mantle of liberalism and modernity in Pakistan.