By Mudassir Changwani concluded
The country is caught. Between a political party – the PTI, which is interested in holding absolute power. And an establishment interested in holding a monopoly over power. Resultantly, the state apparatus has become too weak to deliver democratic ideals for its people; yet, it is strong enough for leaders on both sides of the aisle to continue fighting for. Having little to nothing hope to offer its people; yet, it’s capable enough to keep the elite at the helm of affairs.
What is more promising – Imran Khan, who is eroding confidence in the parliament, causing social frictions, engineering the social media landscape to spread alternate facts and truths, creating polarization and dysfunction or the establishment, which has a poor sense of following the constitution and for restraint, and a strong tendency towards manipulating political process to its objective of power monopoly? Where to live – under an umbrella of populism which projects and protects hatred and lies or with the establishment that cherishes the hateful idea of a clientelistic state? https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2022/10/26/elite-middle-class-and-devolution/
Surely, for a person of sense and prudence, these alternatives are hardly favorable. The people must be forgiven, therefore, for having a sense of being besieged. Not necessarily against the people, however, the resultant political power structure effectively is curbing political freedom, obliterating the significance of the constitution and negating the role of parliament, breathing, ultimately, life into economic stagnation and social chaos. The result is that the country has entered into an extended period of more palpable and broader decline and downfall.
Before we move on to the next level of the argument, here, it is essential to acknowledge that all along its history the country has been facing severe challenges, potent enough to stall democratic development and functioning.
- Pakistan is inherently a contradictory state – it has a long, projected network of rivers running all across the country, a considerably elongated sea line on its southern shores, beautiful, minerals-rich mountainous ranges, fertile plains, and a geography full of hope and significance; yet full of conflicts and violence that peace and prosperity have always remained realities of distant future.
- Also, Pakistan never have had a mature, developed state apparatus of political institutions which could sustain political dialogue and engagement in the country. Having deep ethnic and religious divisions among its people, the room for the spread of democratic norms and ideals, therefore, narrows down to a little.
- Moreover, downward pressure on people’s incomes and wealth, pervasive poverty among the masses, and rising unemployment pose adverse lingering impacts on the development of a democratic setup.
However broader in scope and scale, these challenges have been, they are not the biggest cause of concern; the biggest cause of concern, in reality, is that there is little presence of politics of simple solutions. Politicians have been distrusted before but never like this time. Politics has been disdained before but never like this time. Perhaps said for another society, yet in the words of Albert Camus, the country’s political situation is narrated more aptly: “We live in terror because the dialogue is no longer possible, because man has surrendered entirely to history, because he can no longer find that part of himself, every bit as real as history, that sees beauty in the world and in human faces. We live in a world of abstractions, bureaucracies and machines, absolute ideas, and crude messianism. We suffocate among people who think they are right in their machines as well as their ideas. For those who can live only with dialogue, only with the friendship of men, this silence means the end of the world.”
Certainly, anger and fear are being played off among the people and the crucial process of political dialogue is being sidelined. Yet, these critical times call for the national leadership of all hue and cry to unite together to chart out a progressive roadmap for the country that not only works for increasing general welfare but also suppresses vested interests of anti-democratic forces, were they to ever dare to stand against common progress. The era of vociferous arguments, cutthroat political competition, and political engineering must end. Keeping in sight the sufferings and worries of the Pakistanis, these are not merely asks but responsibilities that every stakeholder must shoulder. https://republicpolicy.com/politics-challenged-caught-between-military-and-imran-khan-are-we-doomed/
The writer is a co-editor at republicpolicy.com
