ISLAMABAD: Leaders of leading Pakistani political parties may spend their days and weeks organizing and addressing public gatherings, explaining their real or imaginary sacrifices and contributions for the cause of democracy, a leading international publication is not impressed with their achievement.
Economist Intelligence Unit, in its recently released Democracy Index 2017, has described Pakistan as a “hybrid regime” rather than a fully functioning democracy. Interestingly, the Unit does not recognize the United States or India as full democracies either.
The purportedly world’s oldest and the world’s largest democracies have been rated as “flawed” democracies. United States shares the joint 21 position with Italy while India is rated at 42nd place.
In a list of 167 countries Pakistan is placed at 110 slot while only 19 countries have qualified as “full democracies” with Norway topping the list and North Korea sitting at the bottom. The title describing the 2017 index is “Free speech under attack”. Apart from the 19 full democracies, 57 countries are declared flawed democracies, 39 are hybrid regimes and 52 are described as authoritarian regimes by the report.