The Hindu : One-man democracy

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 01, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

One-man democracy

By Harold A. Gould

Generals do not impose democracy from the top down. People build democracy from the ground up.

IT IS striking how little note was taken in New Delhi, Washington or the media of Pervez Musharraf's announcement of a national referendum on himself. Since no one ran against him, he in effect will by acclamation "elect" himself President of Pakistan for at least the next five years. There was barely a murmur of incredulity or outrage either from the Land of Thomas Jefferson or the Land of Jawaharlal Nehru, or from the Land of Gladstone and Disraeli, or any other `Western cradle of democracy'. One, of course, can attribute this silence to the sense of resignation which the world of realpolitik has given rise to. No political abomination repels us anymore as long as it can be rationalised or justified in the name of "national interest" and "strategic necessity", or until it blows up in our face. These were the reasons given in the 1980s for selling arms to Khomeni's Iranian Revolution in exchange for profits that the CIA could then illegally funnel to the Nicaraguan Contras. These were the reasons why the Mujahideen, Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban were created, in concert with the CIA and the ISI, to oppose the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and then subsequently were winked at as they transformed themselves into servants of Al-Qaeda and a staging ground for the Kashmir insurgency. These are now the reasons why a strategic marriage of convenience between the U.S. and Gen. Musharraf's military dictatorship was consummated and is now allowed to persist without a murmur despite the fact that it is bad for Pakistan and makes a mockery of all the political values upon which George W. Bush has grounded his War on Terrorism and his vilification of the Axis of Evil.

One American scholar has cavalierly justified the Musharraf regime on the ground that it is a "company town" and "not a military dictatorship" which rules with the consent and collaboration of the "governed" because "most of the civilian leaders have been worse". It implies that the Pakistani people must be led out of their political morass by a General on Horseback who promises free elections bye and bye.

This view undoubtedly titillates the Pakistani elite, U.S. Government officials, their think-tank compatriots, and the western media. Phoney democracy reinforces and protects the Pakistani elite's ill-gotten privileges. It is a facade behind which the American establishment can mask their unspoken belief that lesser developed societies `are unsuited to mature government'.

What all these parties conveniently overlook is that Gen. Musharraf is not the first but the fourth General on Horseback who has ridden out of the military cantonment to "save" the Pakistani people from themselves! Let us remember that Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan and Zia-ul-Haq preceded him. Each time these "saviours" came forth to seize the reins of power on the people's behalf, they in the end plunged Pakistan into war, political repression, economic disaster, and eventual political collapse, followed each time, ironically, by desperate attempts by the politically sane members of Pakistani society to irrevocably end this cycle of government by coup.

Why have they failed? Why, as the cynics claim, have the civilian politicians been worse?

The answer is because they have not been allowed to "grow". It is not because the civilian sector lacks persons with political talent and integrity. It is because the military, bureaucratic and landed elites who control the country's resources have for half a century, out of their contempt for the common man and for democracy, determinedly colluded with each other to prevent Pakistan from "growing" democratic institutions, as its neighbour India did. They have been aided and abetted in this subversion of the democratic process by `democratic' America which, as Mervyn Dymally (Los Angeles Times, April 5) puts it, has allowed "national interests to impugn national character".

From the moment they sabotaged Pakistan's first Constituent Assembly in the1950s, the generals, the landlords and the bureaucrats have systematically aborted the evolutionary stages that all would-be democratic states inevitably must pass through (processes that include factionalism, venality and corruption as well as those Jeffersonian moments) over a prolonged period of time before they mature into institutionally viable open polities. To the extent that this is actually the case, what made the present possible was the elite's and the public's (perhaps at times reluctant) willingness to stand fast when the going got tough and trust the capacity of the institutional edifice they had erected to weather the political storms. The Western democracies did this. The Indian people have so far done this.

However, whenever the going has gotten tough in Pakistan, the anti-democratic rakshasas, using Islamic jingoism and the Kashmir bug-a-boo as crutches, have come charging out of the political woodwork to slay the process before it could work out its kinks. And, tragically, almost always the subversives have received a benevolent pat on the head from the Pakistan lobby in the U.S. The result: periodic military dictatorship which promises the public that which a society can only deliver once it has paid its dues over the long run to the jealous gods of democracy, as India has done.

If anyone believes that this time it will be different, they are going to be sadly disappointed. Generals do not impose democracy from the top down. The people build democracy from the ground up. If the former is what the Bush administration, members of the U.S. Congress and the sages who hold forth in the think-tanks are waiting for, then they have a long and fruitless wait ahead of them.

The imagery of the "company town" being used by some to characterise this de facto form of governance is drawn from the early days of the industrial revolution when it was common for predatory capitalists to monopolise all the means of production in their industry. Not only the factories and mines, but also the towns which housed the workers, the stores in which employees purchased the necessities of life (on credit), and the puppet policemen and corrupt politicians needed to protect their vested interests from the demands of their workers for decent wages, humane living conditions and civil rights.

The implication is that this is the most we can hope for from today's Pakistan. Generals, bureaucrats, merchants and landlords own and control the "town", and the sadharan janata must content themselves with the fishes and loaves dispensed by their paternalistic benefactors, no questions asked. This is the political writ that the Pakistani people have been compelled to endure for more than two generations, and the reason why we are witnessing the spectacle of their being "saved" once again by the same collection of anti-democratic oligarchs who unsuccessfully "saved" them three previous times. Without mature political institutions, it will never be different, and both the Pakistani people and the chances of peace and stability in South Asia will as always be the losers.

(The writer is Visiting Scholar, Center for South Asian Studies, University of Virginia.)

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