There is an historian sitting inside every middle-class Pakistani; this historian tells them what they want to hear. This Herodotus inside many analysts has told them that there is nothing new under the sun. In their opinion, those who are unhappy with political developments in this country are idealist fools, analysing out of a sense of misplaced moral outrage rather than sound logic. Their advice: ‘chill karo’ and enjoy the clever moves of the too-clever-by-half players.
Interestingly, this line of argument is being peddled most by many sympathisers and staunch supports of the PPP. In order to defend Zardari, they argue that ZA Bhutto and BB made many similar Faustian bargains and that Zardari is no exception. In fact, he is exceptional in the brilliance of his deal-making. He knew his options and he played well by checkmating Nawaz Sharif.
“It is a tragedy of Pakistan’s urban liberal chattering class that they fail to realise the ground realities and they see the situation (only) through their idealism. Mostly, rightist forces benefit from their brand of negative idealism,” wrote a journalist on a popular Urdu website. He presents examples of successful amoral deals made by Benazir and also identifies some worthless lefties who ditched the PPP or disagreed with its great leaders on different occasions, and so ended up strengthening the dark forces of the right. Such worthless people who harmed the PPP include Aitzaz Ahsan, Farhatullah Babar and Raza Rabbani. (Thank God, Aitzaz is no more an idealistic fool but now a pukka realist).
A similar line of argument, though more subtle and nuanced, has been adopted by the editor of an English newspaper who wrote: “This outcry in the wake of the Senate election would have made a lot of sense if the basic framework within which Pakistani politics is allowed to operate had changed. The rules remain unchanged.”
The advice is that we should go by empirical analysis, ‘what is’, and avoid the normative analysis ie ‘what ought to be’. Those who dare at normative analysis are political fools with wool pulled over their eyes by their idealism. They also sleepwalk into the enemy camp where they are cooked into nihari in PML-N cauldrons.
What are ground realities in politics? To me, the first and foremost ground reality for a political party is public sentiment. A party must have the pulse of the people and a firm grasp over the changing social dynamics even if wants to be as realist as the devil. Without support and backing from the people, deal-making cannot work long.
It is because of the lack of understanding of these realities that the PPP under Zardari is losing the public pulse. It is a stark measurable reality, not foolish idealism. The PPP got only 2,861 votes in the recent by-elections in NA-154 in Lodhran, a constituency where it had bagged 73,939 votes in 2002 and 61,600 votes in 2008. If you cannot beat Khadim Hussain Rizvi with your PhD in politics and your firm grasp of ground realities, there must be something wrong with your political skills.
The PPP may have been unprincipled from day one, but this is not how the people perceived it. Perhaps people foisted their own idealism on this platform. Perhaps, it only mirrored the desires and aspiration of the working classes – while serving the interests of its leaders. But what made the PPP such an invincible force was the fact that its followers had believed that the party represented their aspirations. Idealism makes pragmatic sense in politics. People do vote for clever, unprincipled people in elections but they want political parties to represent their idealism.
The PPP might have diverged from idealism on many occasions but it has now crossed some red lines that, in my opinion, are unprecedented. Never in the history of democracy have political parties gone to a constitutional court to seek restrictions on freedom of association and their own functioning. This is exactly what was done in the constitutional petition against the Election Act 2017.
In return, they got the ‘sadiq’ and ‘ameen’ law applied on political parties. The judgment states that: “…a party head must necessarily possess the qualifications and be free of the disqualifications contemplated in articles 62 and 63 of the constitution.” By extending ethical qualifications required for legislators to political parties, this verdict also restricts Article 17 that guarantees freedom of association in Pakistan. One wonders why our lords are not required to fulfil the same qualifications since they review legislation adopted in parliament.
Political parties have made concessions in policies, laws and even constitutional articles. However, never before, during a democratic era, has a whole parliamentary house been handed as part of a deal. This is not business as usual.
We are totally worthless if we cannot imagine a different society, a different state, and a different world – and create demand for it. This does not apply to activists alone; it is equally true for scholars and analysts. We cannot normalise what is unacceptable and we cannot allow one actor to create a mess just because another actor had created a similar mess in the past. Our media houses and enterprises and those who run them may be in the business of marketing, but we are not.
It is almost clear that we are entering into a period of political instability. To ensure stability, a country has to be either an authoritarian state or a democratic one. The people of Pakistan have always fought authoritarian regimes, and dictatorships have always ended in chaos. A mixed system can deliver nothing but instability, delivering barren periods like the 1990s when other nations were able to steal a march over us. Democratic setups fail to sustain themselves because they find resistance from authoritarian forces. What’s worse, political parties have failed to create a democratic consensus that can deliver a stable democracy.
PS: Like nature, it is renewal and rebirth that defines life for social entities. Some anthropologists make a distinction between biological death and social death. In traditional societies, biological death comes first and social death follows later. A dead person can remain socially important long after his death. In most modern societies, social death comes first as an old person can retreat to a retirement home where s/he enjoys no influence on family, community and society.
The writer is an anthropologist and development professional.
Email: zaighamkhanyahoo.com
Twitter: zaighamkhan