Dancing with democracy

You hear them – the politicians – rooting for democracy all the time. Most of them do this in a theatrical style, with an utter lack of civility. Democracy is also endorsed by an establishment that has the capacity to preside over this “sorry scheme of things entire”.

But what is happening on the national stage bears evidence that democracy, in a meaningful sense, is becoming more untenable in Pakistan. Among other things, we have just made a landmark turning in the other direction on the Faizabad Interchange. And the charade that our major political parties are playing has further polluted the environment.

A visual description of this charade – “a situation in which people pretend something is true when it is clearly not” – would be the picture in which Asif Ali Zardari is sitting with Dr Tahirul Qadri. It was the PPP leader who visited Dr Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek office in Lahore on Thursday. The cards are being shuffled again in the wake of the Najafi Commission’s report on the Model Town tragedy.

When new alliances are shaped and personal equations are hurriedly reworked, news channels merrily present clippings of what the leaders had previously said about one another. These flashbacks, certifying some of the shameless and treacherous infidelities of our leaders, are so numerous that they have become a comic relief at the cost of the moral authority of our political leadership.

In the midst of this growing political turmoil, I am prompted to look at Pakistan’s declining potential for democracy for a number of reasons. In the first place, today is December 10, which is celebrated across the world as Human Rights Day. The other peg that I have chosen is the keynote address made by the army chief in Quetta on Thursday, which was one of the major headlines of the week. In addition, the visit of the mayor of London to a country that his parents had emigrated from is a message that we need to decipher.

There is a lot more, of course. The abject surrender of the state that is documented in the agreement that our rulers made with the Faizabad protesters is continuing to have its vile repercussions. Today, on Human Rights Day, a fresh campaign is being launched to demand the resignation of Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan.

Consider this situation in the context of what democracy is all about. The leading role now is being played by Pir Hameeduddin Sialvi. He commands the allegiance of 15 parliamentarians who are “spiritually associated” with the Sial Sharif shrine in Sargodha. On Wednesday, Pir Sialvi dissociated himself from the PML-N and is scheduled to present the resignation of some PML-N parliamentarians in a public meeting being held in Faisalabad. Is this how a modern democracy operates?

I am tempted to dwell at some length on the state of human rights in Pakistan and to underline the contradictions that continue to deepen with the attempts made by our rulers to appease religious fanatics and the aversion of our major political parties to uphold the fundamental principles of human rights.

However, I will refer only to what Amnesty International has said about Pakistan. According to Amnesty, the government of Pakistan has failed to protect individuals – particularly women, religious minorities and children – from violence and other human rights abuses. It has failed to ensure legal redress after violations have occurred. The Faizabad encounter has shown how powerful the forces of hatred and intolerance are despite the professed goal of the administration to exterminate terrorism and violent extremism.

As for the speech delivered by General Qamar Javed Bajwa at a seminar in Quetta on Thursday, I would like to focus on what he said about democracy and its values. According to published reports, he said that he believed in democracy and, more so, in the democratic values of selfless service and moral authority. In this sense, he underlined the seminal importance of democratic values over the functional aspects of a democratic dispensation.

This is a profound thought and deserves to be properly interpreted. Unfortunately, the situation that exists on the ground presents no evidence that those who define and execute policies on the national level have any understanding of what the democratic values actually prescribe. On the contrary, steps are constantly taken to subvert the growth of liberal and progressive values that are the foundation of a democratic society.

Since the topic of the seminar that Gen Bajwa addressed was human resource development – with a particular focus on the situation in Balochistan – an emphasis on the supremacy of merit was in order. Incidentally, this and many other problems that our rulers must resolve have some relationship with the rights of citizens that are enshrined in a democracy.

When I suggest that genuine democracy is under severe threat in Pakistan – irrespective of the credibility of the elections and the role that state institutions, like the military, play in setting the national agenda – I have a few specific incidents in mind. Take, for instance, the report that a rights activist, Raza Mahmood Khan, has been missing since December 2. This ‘enforced disappearance’ took place in Lahore and is believed to be a part of attempts to silence other defenders of peace and human rights.

The overall environment has deteriorated to an extent that a party like Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, ostensibly drawing the support of the educated youth, is proud to make an alliance with the religious outfit of Maulana Samiul Haq. Imran Khan’s reported comments on ‘liberals’ may be described as a tragedy of our politics.

Finally, I wonder if General Bajwa would accept the thought that Sadiq Khan truly personifies the democratic values that he was talking about. Is it not a miracle, from our point of view, that the son of a Pakistani immigrant who was a bus driver is the elected mayor of arguably the greatest city in the world?

The manner in which Sadiq Khan’s visit to Pakistan is celebrated shows that we are proud of him because of his Pakistani origin. But the irony is that we do not understand the message he has brought. Just ask Khadim Husain Rizvi or Pir Sialvi if they can comprehend the reality of a Muslim of Pakistan origin rising to that position in the UK.

When it comes to understanding the values of a democracy, our political leaders need to be taught the meaning of pluralism – an idea Sadiq Khan has talked about repeatedly. Forget the madressahs that Gen Bajwa had spoken about. Our universities may not be able to deal with values that are associated with a modern democracy.

The writer is a senior journalist.

Email: ghazi_salahuddin@

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