I had a lot of feedback from my friends in response to my blog titled 'Road to Change for Pakistan' posted on 26 September 2007. After reading my blog Mr. Hussain Haqqani 'moderately enlightened' me by forwarding his article on democracy and in the spirit of 'National Reconciliation' with his permission I have decided to reproduce his article on the blog page, so that his views can be fully communicated. Views in the following article are those of Mr. Haqqani and I am putting them forward without any comments, therefore, I can not be held liable in anyway.
"Myths About Democracy by Hussain Haqqani
(Published in The Nation (Pakistan), Indian Express and Gulf News in October 2002.)
As Pakistanis vote in their sixth general election in 17 years, it is pertinent to ask the reasons for democracy’s failure in the country. Since Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s coup d’etat in 1958, the Pakistani establishment has perpetuated certain myths about why its steadying hand is essential to Pakistan’s survival. Ayub started the practice of revising textbooks and drilling in a specific version of history. The Ministry of Information, too, was Ayub’s creation. The control over textbooks and information flow has helped many otherwise erudite people to accept the establishment’s myth making as fact. The conduct of politicians and the illiteracy of the poor peasants, rather than the establishment’s desire to control the political sphere are widely considered the reason for the weakness of Pakistani democracy. Some of the common myths, the truth about them:
“Democracy cannot function with low literacy levels”. None of the world’s democracies started out with universal literacy. Enfranchising the masses gave them the power to demand literacy in most countries. The demand that only people who know how to read and write should be able to vote has often been used by elite groups to disenfranchise the masses. Blacks in the American South were denied registration as voters through literacy conditions until civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Literacy among blacks and women has increased since they got the vote. Elected governments in India’s West Bengal and Kerala states achieved high literacy rates and currently Bangladesh is improving its literacy rate under democracy. Pakistan, on the other hand, has failed to improve its literacy rate under authoritarian regimes. If authoritarianism was just a temporary measure until universal literacy is achieved, why have Pakistan’s military regimes failed to improve literacy rates? Pakistan and India started out in 1947 with literacy rates of 16 and 18 percent respectively. India now has 62 percent literacy compared with only 38 or 50 percent for Pakistan (depending on whose figures you believe). How did the authoritarian structure, backed by urban and migrant professionals, fall farther behind the democratic one?
“Democracy cannot work under a feudal system”. Western democracies started out under feudal systems but, over time, democracy influenced the system of production and caused the diminution of the former feudal barons. If the military had been serious about eliminating feudalism, it would have done so in its 27 years in power. On the contrary, each military regime in Pakistan has cultivated the feudal influential to offset the influence of populist politicians. Ayub Khan appointed the Nawab of Kalabagh as the Governor of West Pakistan to control the movement for democracy. Yahya Khan’s cabinet included feudal civilians. General Zia encouraged ‘biradari’ and feudal politics to keep the PPP out of power. And now General Musharraf’s political allies are also the land-owning families of the Punjab. The argument against feudalism is only used as a rallying cry for the urban intelligentsia, which would otherwise find military dictatorship unacceptable. The landowning traditional politicians have lost ground to middle class candidates in virtually every election held in Pakistan. Historically, only one out of seven pre-Ayub Khan prime ministers came from the landowning class. While several prominent politicians in the rural areas are landowners, they are more responsive to their rural voters than urban professionals eager to leave the country for better-paid jobs. As for dynastic politics, it is a function of name recognition and political tradition. A family that regularly puts up candidates in elections whether feudal or not becomes a political dynasty. India has its Nehru-Gandhis, Sri Lanka its Bandaranaikes, the United States its Kennedys and Bushes, and Britain its Churchills. Just because Pakistan’s salaried class cannot find a way of running for and winning electoral offices does not mean that mythic arguments about feudalism and dynastic politics (usually advanced by Pakistani military officers, civil servants, doctors, engineers and bankers) should trump Pakistan’s need for a normal, constitutional system of governance and politics.
In any case, political processes in most countries start with feudal domination and, over time, make way for a more middle class leadership. Most of Pakistan's founding fathers would fall under the catch-all phrase ‘feudal;’ Most of them belonged to the landed gentry and held titles conferred by the British. British and U.S. politics a century ago reflected the influence of landowners in a rural milieu. As rural populations declined, so did the influence of the rural landlords. Not all landowners are feudals, any way. Democracy is the way out of feudal domination, over time. Manipulation by anti-democratic technocrat-professional elites and military intervention do little to end feudal influence.
“The Military steps in when politicians fail”. General Yahya’s coup d’etat in 1969, following ten years of Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s dictatorship, is enough to prove this claim wrong. The military steps in when its chief nurses ambition for power otherwise power would be transferred according to the constitution. It is interesting to note that General Zia and Musharraf both claim to have taken over reluctantly, in spontaneous coups. But in both cases evidence exists of prior planning. Admiral Faseeh Bokhari, who resigned as Naval chief a few days prior to the October 1999 coup, has now gone on the record to state that he resigned because he did not want to be part of the coup. According to him, the coup was being planned long before the drama involving his plane trip back from Sri Lanka.
The politicians alleged failures are the excuse, not the reason for military coups in Pakistan. In any case, democracy weeds out the failings of politicians over a period of time. None of the weaknesses attributed to Pakistani politicians – lack of compromise, corruption, patronage, and non-adherence to rule of law – are unique to this country. All democracies have gone through bad governance at one point or another. Constitutional continuity and deference to the people’s wishes rather than arbitrary constitutional changes and military diktat is the democratic answer to misgovernance.
“Pakistan’s political parties are personality cults. Their weakness weakens democracy; Pakistan had two large national parties in 1958, the conservative Muslim League and the progressive Awami League. Ayub Khan split the Muslim League to create his own faction, when he needed a party for himself. General Zia engineered a similar division in the party. The PML has been split since then, primarily due to behind-the-scenes machinations of the intelligence services. If democracy were allowed to function without these attempts to control or fix it, perhaps the tradition of broad-based political parties with internal democracy would have continued to flourish.
“Pakistani politics is characterized by horse-trading. How can there be a democracy in an environment of horse-trading”. Horse-trading started under the pre-martial law regime of Maj. General Iskander Mirza and continued under Ayub Khan and General Zia. The covert operations of the intelligence services during the last ten years forced shifting of political loyalties as attempts were made to destabilize elected governments. Recently, General Musharraf’s regime has used inducements to force politicians to change loyalties while creating the PML-QA. Bargaining and give-and-take is part of any political system. But horse-trading, as Pakistan knows it today is a gift of the military’s political interventions.
“Civilian rulers have been more authoritarian and corrupt”. Under Ayub Khan, the press was totally controlled and the opposition was denied breathing space. Nawab Kalabagh had Jamaat-e-Islami leader Maulana Maududi fired upon. An assassination attempt on opposition politician Abdul Baqi Baloch resulted in the death of a journalist traveling with him. General Yahya’s regime practiced such brutal repression in then East Pakistan that it opted to become Bangladesh. Oppression of the opposition, especially the PPP, under General Zia’s regime was severe and widespread. The repressive tactics often associated with Mr. Z.A. Bhutto were all a continuum of the Ayub era. Mr. Bhutto’s mistake was to carry forward the preceding military regime’s methods, not inventing new ones. But over the years the establishment has kept discussion of the civilians’ errors alive while concealing those of its generals. The same is true of corruption. Corruption of civilian regimes, though deplorable, is used by the military to justify its own political ventures. But the establishment does not allow open discussion or debate of the corruption of its own. In any case, corruption in most civilized nations is dealt with by law not by overthrowing the legally established order.
“Pakistan’s political governments have all been disasters”. Pakistan only surplus budgets came under civilian governments before 1958. The Zulfikar Ali Bhutto regime, despite its flaws, opened the doors for economic prosperity for millions by opening travel opportunities for all Pakistanis. (Until the first Bhutto government, obtaining a passport was a nightmare). Mohammed Khan Junejo laid the foundations of a free press. Beazer Bhutto's’ first government paved the way for the communications revolution by opening the market for pagers, cellular phones and CNN transmission. Nawaz Sharif’s first administration seriously started privatization. Benazir Bhutto’s second government eliminated polio. But none of these achievements are discussed because the establishment constantly hammers home the obvious faults of the civilian regimes while hiding the military regimes’ weaknesses. Gen. Ayub Khan introduced the political culture of intimidating opponents. Gen. Yahya Khan presided over the break up of Pakistan. Gen. Ziaul Haq introduced Kalashnikov culture and Islamist militancy. Gen. Musharraf’s three years in power have seen a ten- percent rise in the number of those living below the poverty line.
“The military is Pakistan’s institution of last resort”. It need not be so. Pakistan's judiciary started crumbling when the military advised then Chief Justice Munir to support Governor General Ghulam Mohammed against the constituent assembly in 1954. Ayub and Zia both pressured judges to give verdicts of their choice. General Musharraf, too, has sought legitimacy from a Supreme Court he reconstituted after his military takeover. Elsewhere in the world, institutions evolve because they are allowed to function without interference. In Pakistan, the judiciary and the civil service have been consistently subject to military directives while the legislature has never been taken seriously since the ascendancy of the executive was established under Ayub Khan."
"Myths About Democracy by Hussain Haqqani
(Published in The Nation (Pakistan), Indian Express and Gulf News in October 2002.)
As Pakistanis vote in their sixth general election in 17 years, it is pertinent to ask the reasons for democracy’s failure in the country. Since Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s coup d’etat in 1958, the Pakistani establishment has perpetuated certain myths about why its steadying hand is essential to Pakistan’s survival. Ayub started the practice of revising textbooks and drilling in a specific version of history. The Ministry of Information, too, was Ayub’s creation. The control over textbooks and information flow has helped many otherwise erudite people to accept the establishment’s myth making as fact. The conduct of politicians and the illiteracy of the poor peasants, rather than the establishment’s desire to control the political sphere are widely considered the reason for the weakness of Pakistani democracy. Some of the common myths, the truth about them:
“Democracy cannot function with low literacy levels”. None of the world’s democracies started out with universal literacy. Enfranchising the masses gave them the power to demand literacy in most countries. The demand that only people who know how to read and write should be able to vote has often been used by elite groups to disenfranchise the masses. Blacks in the American South were denied registration as voters through literacy conditions until civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Literacy among blacks and women has increased since they got the vote. Elected governments in India’s West Bengal and Kerala states achieved high literacy rates and currently Bangladesh is improving its literacy rate under democracy. Pakistan, on the other hand, has failed to improve its literacy rate under authoritarian regimes. If authoritarianism was just a temporary measure until universal literacy is achieved, why have Pakistan’s military regimes failed to improve literacy rates? Pakistan and India started out in 1947 with literacy rates of 16 and 18 percent respectively. India now has 62 percent literacy compared with only 38 or 50 percent for Pakistan (depending on whose figures you believe). How did the authoritarian structure, backed by urban and migrant professionals, fall farther behind the democratic one?
“Democracy cannot work under a feudal system”. Western democracies started out under feudal systems but, over time, democracy influenced the system of production and caused the diminution of the former feudal barons. If the military had been serious about eliminating feudalism, it would have done so in its 27 years in power. On the contrary, each military regime in Pakistan has cultivated the feudal influential to offset the influence of populist politicians. Ayub Khan appointed the Nawab of Kalabagh as the Governor of West Pakistan to control the movement for democracy. Yahya Khan’s cabinet included feudal civilians. General Zia encouraged ‘biradari’ and feudal politics to keep the PPP out of power. And now General Musharraf’s political allies are also the land-owning families of the Punjab. The argument against feudalism is only used as a rallying cry for the urban intelligentsia, which would otherwise find military dictatorship unacceptable. The landowning traditional politicians have lost ground to middle class candidates in virtually every election held in Pakistan. Historically, only one out of seven pre-Ayub Khan prime ministers came from the landowning class. While several prominent politicians in the rural areas are landowners, they are more responsive to their rural voters than urban professionals eager to leave the country for better-paid jobs. As for dynastic politics, it is a function of name recognition and political tradition. A family that regularly puts up candidates in elections whether feudal or not becomes a political dynasty. India has its Nehru-Gandhis, Sri Lanka its Bandaranaikes, the United States its Kennedys and Bushes, and Britain its Churchills. Just because Pakistan’s salaried class cannot find a way of running for and winning electoral offices does not mean that mythic arguments about feudalism and dynastic politics (usually advanced by Pakistani military officers, civil servants, doctors, engineers and bankers) should trump Pakistan’s need for a normal, constitutional system of governance and politics.
In any case, political processes in most countries start with feudal domination and, over time, make way for a more middle class leadership. Most of Pakistan's founding fathers would fall under the catch-all phrase ‘feudal;’ Most of them belonged to the landed gentry and held titles conferred by the British. British and U.S. politics a century ago reflected the influence of landowners in a rural milieu. As rural populations declined, so did the influence of the rural landlords. Not all landowners are feudals, any way. Democracy is the way out of feudal domination, over time. Manipulation by anti-democratic technocrat-professional elites and military intervention do little to end feudal influence.
“The Military steps in when politicians fail”. General Yahya’s coup d’etat in 1969, following ten years of Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s dictatorship, is enough to prove this claim wrong. The military steps in when its chief nurses ambition for power otherwise power would be transferred according to the constitution. It is interesting to note that General Zia and Musharraf both claim to have taken over reluctantly, in spontaneous coups. But in both cases evidence exists of prior planning. Admiral Faseeh Bokhari, who resigned as Naval chief a few days prior to the October 1999 coup, has now gone on the record to state that he resigned because he did not want to be part of the coup. According to him, the coup was being planned long before the drama involving his plane trip back from Sri Lanka.
The politicians alleged failures are the excuse, not the reason for military coups in Pakistan. In any case, democracy weeds out the failings of politicians over a period of time. None of the weaknesses attributed to Pakistani politicians – lack of compromise, corruption, patronage, and non-adherence to rule of law – are unique to this country. All democracies have gone through bad governance at one point or another. Constitutional continuity and deference to the people’s wishes rather than arbitrary constitutional changes and military diktat is the democratic answer to misgovernance.
“Pakistan’s political parties are personality cults. Their weakness weakens democracy; Pakistan had two large national parties in 1958, the conservative Muslim League and the progressive Awami League. Ayub Khan split the Muslim League to create his own faction, when he needed a party for himself. General Zia engineered a similar division in the party. The PML has been split since then, primarily due to behind-the-scenes machinations of the intelligence services. If democracy were allowed to function without these attempts to control or fix it, perhaps the tradition of broad-based political parties with internal democracy would have continued to flourish.
“Pakistani politics is characterized by horse-trading. How can there be a democracy in an environment of horse-trading”. Horse-trading started under the pre-martial law regime of Maj. General Iskander Mirza and continued under Ayub Khan and General Zia. The covert operations of the intelligence services during the last ten years forced shifting of political loyalties as attempts were made to destabilize elected governments. Recently, General Musharraf’s regime has used inducements to force politicians to change loyalties while creating the PML-QA. Bargaining and give-and-take is part of any political system. But horse-trading, as Pakistan knows it today is a gift of the military’s political interventions.
“Civilian rulers have been more authoritarian and corrupt”. Under Ayub Khan, the press was totally controlled and the opposition was denied breathing space. Nawab Kalabagh had Jamaat-e-Islami leader Maulana Maududi fired upon. An assassination attempt on opposition politician Abdul Baqi Baloch resulted in the death of a journalist traveling with him. General Yahya’s regime practiced such brutal repression in then East Pakistan that it opted to become Bangladesh. Oppression of the opposition, especially the PPP, under General Zia’s regime was severe and widespread. The repressive tactics often associated with Mr. Z.A. Bhutto were all a continuum of the Ayub era. Mr. Bhutto’s mistake was to carry forward the preceding military regime’s methods, not inventing new ones. But over the years the establishment has kept discussion of the civilians’ errors alive while concealing those of its generals. The same is true of corruption. Corruption of civilian regimes, though deplorable, is used by the military to justify its own political ventures. But the establishment does not allow open discussion or debate of the corruption of its own. In any case, corruption in most civilized nations is dealt with by law not by overthrowing the legally established order.
“Pakistan’s political governments have all been disasters”. Pakistan only surplus budgets came under civilian governments before 1958. The Zulfikar Ali Bhutto regime, despite its flaws, opened the doors for economic prosperity for millions by opening travel opportunities for all Pakistanis. (Until the first Bhutto government, obtaining a passport was a nightmare). Mohammed Khan Junejo laid the foundations of a free press. Beazer Bhutto's’ first government paved the way for the communications revolution by opening the market for pagers, cellular phones and CNN transmission. Nawaz Sharif’s first administration seriously started privatization. Benazir Bhutto’s second government eliminated polio. But none of these achievements are discussed because the establishment constantly hammers home the obvious faults of the civilian regimes while hiding the military regimes’ weaknesses. Gen. Ayub Khan introduced the political culture of intimidating opponents. Gen. Yahya Khan presided over the break up of Pakistan. Gen. Ziaul Haq introduced Kalashnikov culture and Islamist militancy. Gen. Musharraf’s three years in power have seen a ten- percent rise in the number of those living below the poverty line.
“The military is Pakistan’s institution of last resort”. It need not be so. Pakistan's judiciary started crumbling when the military advised then Chief Justice Munir to support Governor General Ghulam Mohammed against the constituent assembly in 1954. Ayub and Zia both pressured judges to give verdicts of their choice. General Musharraf, too, has sought legitimacy from a Supreme Court he reconstituted after his military takeover. Elsewhere in the world, institutions evolve because they are allowed to function without interference. In Pakistan, the judiciary and the civil service have been consistently subject to military directives while the legislature has never been taken seriously since the ascendancy of the executive was established under Ayub Khan."
