Side-effect
The writer is a poet and author based in Islamabad.
How do we view power? How do we want our political representatives to look? How do we want those holding public offices to lead their lives? How do we want the ordinary citizens of Pakistan to be treated by those enjoying political or executive authority?
Let me begin with an anecdote. In 2008, I was volunteering in the election campaign of a trade union leader who was contesting from Rawalpindi on the ticket of a newly formed left-wing political party. The candidate was a committed socialist, well known and popular in the constituency. He struggled all his life for the rights of workers and common citizens and never lost contact with people around him in his large working class neighbourhood or with those comrades and co-workers whom he associated with by virtue of leading a major trade union.
The campaign had just begun when some friendly women and men from the neighbourhood came up to him and said in plain words that if he wanted to even get some traction in the constituency, leave alone win the election, he (Comrade Abdul Sattar) would have to come across as a ‘powerful’ man. “It is not really about the ideology you profess which is close to our heart or the political ability you demonstrate that we certainly believe in, you have to be seen as more powerful than the ones you want votes from”, they continued.
Sattar made a long emotional speech in response and tried to convince them that he was nothing on his own and it was their power he was depending on – the power of the working class living in his constituency – because he came from them, represented their needs and would fight for their rights when elected. They were not convinced and offered some practical advice to Sattar before leaving. They also told him that on the day of the election he would see for himself that they were right.
Committed as he was, Sattar wanted to win the election for his people and his party. He asked for more financial support to feed people in the area who visited his camps, more and better vehicles to carry him and other workers around, more cash-in-hand for those who were running the campaign on the ground, improved facilities in public meetings, and so on and so forth.
How much could a small left-wing party provide? But still they tried hard, raised funds across Pakistan, invested in banners, buntings, flags, posters, printed material, bumper stickers, etc. They organised tea and simple meals for people from the community working as volunteers and those who happened to be there at the time of a meal. They ran a door-to-door campaign, visited each house and each shop. We knew that he would not easily win but what we had little idea about was that Sattar’s own workers and volunteers would end up voting for someone else. He got a little more than one hundred votes on polling day in the whole constituency. His neighbours were proven right. Despite being very popular among his people they didn’t find him powerful enough to represent them.
This is just one of the many incidents that I can relate. In 1988, Jam Saqi got a few hundred votes from his constituency despite being one of the most popular politicians of the time in Sindh and with all the leftist and democratic forces in the province supporting his campaign. So many other examples can be quoted to infer that Sattar’s neighbours were right. The Pakistani voter, even if s/he wants social change and decides to support a progressive political force in a given context, when it comes to an individual votes for someone who looks ‘powerful’.
It is natural to support a leader that looks powerful. But what makes him (very occasionally ‘her’) look powerful to us in most parts of Pakistan? Knowledge? No. Talent? No. Skill? No. Struggle? No. Wealth? Yes. For us, wealth is knowledge, talent and skill. Being wealthy is the only criterion for being successful. We need others to wage ordinary struggles for us, not our leaders. And, once in a rare while, if a wealthy political leader gets imprisoned or roughed up by police, that is enough to be counted as his struggle.
Who is wealthy? Large landholders, businesspersons, industrialists, high-end professionals who get compensated for making the system work, real-estate and property dealers including builders including both civilians and military servicemen, transporters and smugglers. How is this wealth made? This wealth is made through working people’s labour subsidising the rich, unfair commercial practices, illicit means of acquisition and transfer of wealth, encroachments on land, bank defaults, etc. Fair means available to amassing wealth are few and far between.
The state is captured by the elite and policies are made to benefit them. Monopolies are an outcome of these policies even if there is a competition commission. The most our poor get is a safety net like Benazir Income Support Programme so that they are merely able to survive. Even that comes under fire by able economists and policymakers from the affluent middle class who argue that we are making the poorest lazy by making them able to buy wheat flour for a family of ten elders and children surviving on an average cumulative income of less than Rs8,000 a month. Incredible, isn’t it?
Therefore, it is established that possession of, or access to loads of wealth, is the only qualification for doing politics in Pakistan. In a third world economy like ours, that wealth is generated and accumulated through primitive means. If not markets per se, monopolies that are created in the farcical name of equal opportunities, free market and freedom of choice dominate our society and polity. And these people who have amassed wealth have the means to fight elections. We are overawed by their success in becoming wealthy or inheriting wealth. We love them when they brandish this wealth. We vote for them.
Once we have voted them in, we want them to lead simple lives. We want them to behave like honest university professors. Some of us are naïve enough to think that making the kind of money and assets that our rich have made is possible or was possible through fair and legal means. It is not possible in the world – particularly in the third world. Those in power today made their wealth the same way as those who are challenging them made it. Some made more, some less.
I believe, without any doubt, that the prime minister and his family must be subjected to a thorough and independent inquiry. It is more of an ethical issue than a legal one. But where is the money and resources for opposition rallies against the incumbents coming from? It is in hundreds of millions. I have a simple question to put here. Did the rich politicians of the PTI made their buck differently from the rich politicians of the PML-N? Or, for that matter, did the rich politicians of the PPP, MQM and ANP make their money any differently?
In the name of corruption and accountability, one set of the rich and wealthy is replaced by another set of the rich and wealthy. We live in a plutocracy – the democracy of the rich – and, while we need more democraticisation in terms of strengthening institutions and continuity of elections to turn us into a people’s democracy, we also need a change in the attitude of our electorate. Monopolistic capitalism is based on corruption, injustice, exclusion and dispossession of the majority. If wealth remains the only qualification, this is what we will continue to get.
Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com
