A Vote for Military Rule?
By Ahmad Faruqui, PhD
Dansville, CA

Can a majority vote to not vote? That is precisely what six out of ten Pakistanis did recently in a widely-cited poll of South Asian voter preferences.
On the surface, this result is at odds with a survey conducted four years ago jointly by the Universities of Faisalabad and Michigan. Eighty-eight percent of those surveyed said democracy was a good or fairly good political system. Eighty-two percent said that democracy, despite its problems, was better than other political systems. And only four percent thought that army rule was very good or fairly good.
However, on a deeper examination, a similar theme emerges from both polls. In the first poll, only eight percent said they were happy with the country’s political system and only twenty-eight percent had confidence in the political parties. At the same time, fifty percent expressed their confidence in the civil services and eighty-six percent in the armed forces. A very large number, eighty-nine percent, said that the country was run by big interest groups who looked out for themselves.
More pessimism emerges in subsequent questions. When asked to specify what they would like to see happen in the future, only four percent wanted to have more say in government decision-making versus fifty-seven percent who wanted improvements in the law and order situation and seventy-six percent who wanted higher economic growth.
Pakistanis are deeply skeptical about the country’s political process and do not believe that political parties can govern effectively. Thus, they are willing to forgo their constitutional right to choose their own leader because they think the “man on horseback” rather than a leader who emerges from an electoral process would be a superior ruler.
In most other countries, military rule has yielded to democratic rule. Why not in Pakistan? Once the Quaid passed away, the elected officials, who were mostly feudal lords, made such a hash of things in the following decade that the common man was happy to see the military take over. The first few years of Ayub’s rule were well received but things started going downhill after the war with India. Corruption and nepotism became rampant, income inequalities grew and the eastern province felt left out of the picture. Ayub was pushed out by a street revolt.
A second round of military rule ensued, which ended abruptly when the military bungled the civil war in East Pakistan. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had a golden opportunity to set a new pace. But his feudal ego could brook no rivals, in or out of uniform. His governance ended when a street revolt triggered yet another round of military rule. That ended eleven years later with a still-mysterious plane crash. This was followed by a decade of civilian rule that was just about as bad as that seen in the decade after the Quaid’s death and led to the fourth and ongoing round of military rule.
In Pakistan’s political history, personalities have overwhelmed institutions. This has been true regardless of whether the rulers have been in or out of uniform. Institutional development has only received lip service from the rulers who have craved “unity of command,” a concept that predates General Musharraf’s articulation of that term.
All Pakistani heads of government have relished absolute control over the institutions of state. They have violated the constitutionally mandated separation of powers doctrine. To quote Lord Action, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Nepotism, corruption and incompetence are the logical outcome.
These problems were not unique to the tenure of the last two civilian rulers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif but it is their misrule that colors the political memory of most Pakistanis alive today. And since these two were democratically elected, this seems to have heavily distorted people’s impressions of democracy.
Thus, the distaste for democracy stems not from an inherent dislike for the democratic process but from the results that it has produced. But such thinking is strategically myopic, as wise as “throwing out the baby with the bathwater.”
A vote for military rule is doomed to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the military continues to seize power every time there is a political crisis, how will effective civilian institutions ever develop? To survive, Pakistan has to develop self-correcting mechanisms in its polity.
Oxford’s Samuel Finer, who coined the term, “man on horseback,” wrote that armies dominated primitive societies because they were able to deliver law and order and provide educational, social and economic development services. However, as societies advanced, armies had to cede control to civilians, not because they could no longer provide such services but because their lack of moral authority to govern became apparent.
Declaring that he was destined to “save the people from themselves,” Ayub abolished all political parties. His paternalistic formulation of Basic Democracy was designed to bring real democracy to Pakistan 40 years later. Yahya held elections but did not honor them, hoping to avoid the very dismemberment of the nation that he was fated to preside over. Stating that the future of Pakistan lay “in democracy and in democracy alone,” Zia continued to deny democracy as long as he lived. Musharraf sings from the same song book. By giving himself an indefinite tenure as the absolute ruler, he hides behind a democratic façade.
Pakistan’s “four horsemen” have condemned it to a state of political infancy. Every mother who has held her toddler’s hand to teach him how to walk knows that one day she will have to let go off the hand or her child will be crippled for life. Any father who has put training wheels on his daughter’s bike knows that one day he will have to remove those wheels or she will never ride the bike on her own. How could it be any different in politics?
It is not surprising that, when given two bad choices – with one being to elect civilians who have proven to be corrupt and incompetent and the other one being to accept being ruled by whoever commands the loyalty of the Corps Commanders — Pakistanis have shown a strong preference for the latter.
By surrendering their constitutional right to vote, the people have enrolled in a game of Russian roulette. There is no guarantee that the next military ruler will be a liberal and tolerant one. Nor is there any guarantee that Musharraf, who views the world through rose-colored glasses, will step down from office when things falls apart. Modifying one of Shakespeare’s most frequently quoted verses, one might ask:
What’s in a name?
That which we call military rule
By any other name would smell as bad.

 

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Editor: Akhtar M. Faruqui
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