Global Village Space
February 8 Elections: A Farcical Exercise?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
It was that famous ‘Father of Communism,’ German philosopher Karl Marx who had said: “history repeats: first, as a tragedy, second as a farce.”
Pakistan has repeatedly seen the history of men-in-khaki blatantly and aggressively intervening in the country’s political system and statecraft. The tragedy of martial law, first enacted by Bonaparte General Ayub Khan, in October, 1958, has repeated itself, at regular intervals of 20 years, twice: by General Ziaul Haq, in 1977 and by General Pervez Musharraf, in 1999.
Both ML regimes, of Ziaul Haq and Musharraf, went through the motions of husbanding controlled democracy under their wings, but each experiment led to democracy never fledgling or striking roots under constant military vigilance and surveillance.
All four military soldiers of fortune—Ayub, Yahya, Ziaul Haq and Musharraf—experimented with their own ‘invention’ of elections, under the shadows of military bayonets.
Ayub did that with the help of his infamous ‘Basic Democracy,’ in the guise of which he could, and did, easily pull the levers of power. He used that weapon to beat Fatima Jinnah, in the 1965 Presidential election, though the sister of the Founder of Pakistan was a clear choice of the majority of Pakistan’s populace.
Ziaul Haq, in 1985, conducted his ‘promised’ elections on a non-party basis. He fulfilled his 1977 ‘pledge’ of holding elections ‘within 90 days’ of his coup against Zulfi Bhutto, by missing the mark by only 8 years. But he went through that exercise on his own terms: keeping political parties out in the cold and managing those elected to his ‘Majlis-e-Shoora.’
Musharraf held elections, three years after his coup against Nawaz Sharif, having created his own ‘King’s Party’ in the guise of his baptized faction of Muslim League, a.k.a. PML (Q).
Yahya was the only Bonaparte to have held general elections in Pakistan according to international norms, in December 1970. But he went through that watershed exercise in the expectations that no political party in the then united Pakistan would emerge with a clear majority. His ‘smart’ geniuses within the military establishment had assured him that in a hung parliament, he would play the role of a kingmaker.
The impending general elections, come February 8, aren’t, ostensibly, taking place under military wings. But that’s only an illusion. As any keen political pundit, carefully monitoring Pakistan’s political trajectory since the fall of Imran Khan’s (IK) elected government, in April 2022, would tell you Pakistan is as firmly in the grip of Bonapartes as it ever has been, consistently and relentlessly, over the past seven decades.
The current ‘hybrid’ system is the invention of the whiz kids running the show at the epicenter of military establishment. They have leveraged their weight into every sinew of governance in the country and have been pulling the strings on everything that matters, including, foremost, how the political process is managed—from behind the curtain—without any military presence, up front.
It’s unthinkable, as such, that the military establishment wouldn’t stage-manage the upcoming elections. They will, in its macro and micro-forms.
The military wizards—with the blackened history of managed democracy in Pakistan as their primer—are determined to not repeat the ‘blunder’ of Yahya Khan. He, in their perception, had left too much to chance by hoping that free and fair elections, on his watch, would spawn a hung parliament and, that outcome, would ensure his perpetuity in power.
The current crop of Bonapartes in the military establishment has come up with a much smarter plan, according to its paradigm of controlled democracy.
To begin with, they’re taking no chances, none at all, on giving a free run of the electoral landscape to the present-day-Mujib, a.k.a. Imran Khan (IK). With a lot of help from a supine and ready-to-oblige, moth-eaten and bone-corrupt judicial system, they’re keeping the Mujib of the day, IK, firmly locked up behind the bars.
It’s not only that PTI, IK’s brainchild, has been rendered an orphan without its leader and mentor, but with the apex court firmly on its side, the establishment has left PTI bereft without its universally-known electoral symbol.
Depriving PTI of its famous electoral symbol—the cricket bat—is a manifest ploy to literally pull the rug from under the feet of PTI.
In a country where illiteracy is still rampant, PTI’s candidates, shorn of their familiar-to-all election symbol, will be entering the contest like a pugilist with one arm tied behind his back. This is as clear and categorical a handicap for PTI candidates—now running in the contest in their individual capacity as the so-called ‘independents.’
In other words, PTI has already been exposed to pre-poll rigging, with the dice firmly loaded against them.
This clever stratagem of the military establishment, ironically, isn’t so covert as to be unintelligible to the people of Pakistan.
A recent public opinion poll, conducted by “Dawn,” Pakistan’s most respected newspaper, has come up with not-too-surprising results.
As expected—not only in Pakistan but also in the world beyond Pakistan—PTI is the favorite political party, of more than 80 percent of those taking the poll. By the same token, IK is the most popular political leader in the country, notwithstanding the fact that the current dispensation of power is firmly anchored in the idea of keeping him out of the public limelight.
But what’s the most riveting finding of the public survey is the people’s diffidence about the whole supposedly-democratic undertaking. More than 80 percent fear that the election results would be doctored and engineered to ensure that the people’s choice was manipulated, and altered, with an obliging and partisan Election Commission at the beck and call of the military establishment.
Another public opinion survey—this one conducted by BBC in Pakistan—has also come up with interesting—though troublesome to those still enamored with classical concept of a free democracy—findings.
The BBC survey says that clan and ancestral politics—a bane of many a developing country—has Pakistan firmly in its chokehold. According to the findings, Pakistan has a 53 percent component of ancestral politicians hogging elected seats in Federal and Provincial Assemblies. This is the highest in the world. The figure of ancestral political representation in next door India is only 28 percent. It’s only 6 percent in the US Congress.
Ancestral and clan-based political representatives and ‘electables’ are the darlings of Pakistani Bonapartes. They provide the human face to the military establishment’s controlled democracy; they’re the clogs in the wheels of the hybrid system of governance honed, over decades, by Pakistan’s military whiz kids.
Seen against this perspective, it makes all the sense for the military establishment to have taken Nawaz Sharif off the wraps. All the impediments and obstacles in the way of the much-discredited three-times PM, have been meticulously removed. The Bonapartes, pulling strings from behind the scene, have engineered Nawaz’ rehabilitation and given him a new coating of acceptability. Their favorite political puppet is no longer in the wilderness. He’s being carefully redressed to serve his masters.
This, not-too-opaque, but rather fully transparent and carefully choreographed political engineering provides grist to the people’s apprehension that the electoral exercise, next February 8, will not be reflective of their will. It will be, to them, a thoroughly farcical exercise to serve vested interest, in defiance of the people.
But who cares for popular will in the corridors of power. They’re there to ensure their overarching tutelage of the system, designed to protect their privileged perch at the pinnacle of power-pyramid. That’s the bottom line. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
