Despite the din

Think of it: Chairman Senate Raza Rabbani goes on uninhibited with his proceedings; constituting a Committee of the Whole, feeding inputs to policy formulation, making ministers respond to key issues to the satisfaction of the Senate. Most recently he got the military hierarchy to appear before the Senate and seek answers to the various issues that plague the minds of the senators, and thus establish the basis of a functioning democratic culture which when working in its true spirit will have men of power respond to it with deference.

Most useful inputs in policy formulation or clarifications on key policy matters anyway originate from the proceedings of the Senate; our National Assembly, sadly, is so listless. Not that all would have been satisfied with one appearance of the army chief before them, nor may the senators agree with whatever is deposed before them but the mere fact of a functional and a productive democratic structure infuses promise and hope. If here then why not elsewhere?

There were some key legislative matters pending before the Senate, like the constitutional amendment meant to enable the Election Commission to fresher delimitations around provisional findings of the census as a one-time measure. It has now been passed, thankfully, to pave the way for timely elections in 2018. The chairman of the Senate was right all along to express his frustration on the spasmodic functionality of the democratic processes and unnecessary delays in key legislation. Yet this one facet of state’s political structure, the Senate, continues to keep the wheels of democracy churning.

Compare this to what the speaker of the National Assembly had to say in his rare media appearance where, as the speaker, his first and foremost disappointment was with the political culture of the country, and in his inability to get the NA to keep the quorum right for the proceedings. The NA, constituting of the directly elected representatives of the people seems to be in revolt. The ministers don’t appear during question hours, the members don’t attend the proceedings and nothing ever gets done in legislative terms.

The Fata Bill continues to remain unattended. Obviously there are reasons to it, and none so complimentary, yet its smacks of the outright failure of a political system where the entire country and their political and institutional system agrees to such grant of human rights to the people of Fata as are enjoyed by the rest of the country, but is unable to pass such legislation at the altar of hopeless political expedience.

Such failures to move the main stakeholder of the democratic structure, the NA, into any positive contribution to strengthen democratic culture is further aggravated by the personal loyalties of many of the PML-N lawmakers – including the speaker – who are in a race to exhibit an odious facade of loyalty to Nawaz Sharif. Rather than the PML-N or its political philosophy, or the sustainability of the democratic processes, or the stability of the incumbent government and associated political structures, the focus remains only on one man and his personal interest which they unabashedly serve.

This renders the political culture and its various elements to allegations of characterless servility while trashing the democratic processes to extreme fragility and inefficiencies, bringing both the state and the government to a standstill as is currently on display.

It is almost like deliberately failing both the government and the state in full view of the people of Pakistan, and in their name, to the point of discrediting and blackmailing the system to bend to the whims of one man found in the wrong by the law and thus summarily removed from his position. That he continues to be tried by criminal courts which could further incriminate him to conviction is still a possibility. Yet, the entire PML-N and the NA, where the party is in majority, will not function till ‘dear’ leader is somehow restored to his right to assume power. The sense of entitlement and privilege overarching before any consideration of the law of the land.

This remains the nuclear failure of the power structure as it exists, holding the state and the nation back even as challenges to it mount by the minute. The largest contributor to an unstable political environment in the country today stems from the ruling party of Nawaz Sharif even as it sits atop the various governmental and political institutions of the state. Even if NS perceives wrong on factual or legal grounds the courts are the place to fight his case. It can’t be done holding the entire country, nation and state to ransom. This smacks of ill-will and a bankrupt moral approach betraying a shameless lust for power.

The recent experience should be the most instructive for our democratic stakeholders. Pakistan may have suffered many wrongs and the political class has a valid cause for complaint in how other institutions have at times rendered it ineffective. Yet the onus of making politics right enough for all to consider it a common national cause has always been with the politicians who seek to be entrusted with the task of managing both the state and the nation.

That only will reinforce the constituency and agency for commitment to democracy as a system of governing the nation and the state. Their inadequacies, augmented by filial leanings and personalised interests, have engendered instead an environment of exploitation and reduced the political entity to serious circumspection. More than a consequence of institutional power-play, it remains the failure of the political system itself to rise above petty familial centricity to usher broader good. Pakistani politicians have singularly failed to rise to that level of common reputation.

One other lesson we may draw from the relatively better run Senate is that when an institution seems to be functioning and doing its bit – warts and all – and yet continuing to trudge along in fulfilment of its responsibility towards the national cause, it will earn popular goodwill. And others will bow before its utilitarian approach and assist in whatever might be its need and processes. And when the more central and more representative, the NA, deliberately fails to stall a running system to seek connived results in pursuit of narrow interests it shall earn no respect. To sit atop such structure, the speaker of the NA could only rue what was not in his, his institutions and his nation’s best interest.

Nawaz Sharif wishes to force a public uprising against the institutions of the state, the judiciary primarily and – through extended reasoning – the military because it is easier to pin on it bias against the political system around historical evidence while fighting an entirely personal battle. It is his right to voice his discontent but to take the entire structure down – state, government and nation – is neither helpful to his cause nor to that of his progeny on whose behalf he fights his final political battle. That it also remains a disservice to the cause of democracy and political culture is obvious.

Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com