August 03 , 2012

Pakistan’s Ruling Elite

(Editor’s note: The writer’s colum n last week presented the status of the common man. Here he talks about the ruling elite to complete the picture.)

The dominant features of Pakistan’s ruling elite are their arrogance, excessive pride, an autocratic mindset, a tendency to flaunt their wealth and a deliberate indifference, if not disdain, towards the common man.

The elite comprise: (1) higher echelons of the military and civil bureaucracies, in that order, (2) feudal lords and tribal chiefs, and (3) wealthy industrialists, business magnates, drug barons and smugglers.

This triumvirate has been for decades playing the game of musical chairs for power and pelf, but ensuring at the same time that no outsider ever gets anywhere near their domain. They have networked into a self-serving, self-preserving system.

Z.A. Bhutto, the feudal lord from Larkana, in his lust for power stirred up the emotions of the public by calling them “the fountainhead of all power”. The extensive public response to his call astounded even himself; it reflected the outburst of the pent up emotions of the public. Riding on the crest of the massive agitation, he climbed into the seat of power by deposing two military dictators, one after the other. His oft-repeated empathy for the downtrodden, despite its sincerity being clearly open to question, did give the poor a sense of self-esteem but an unforgivable offense to the elite. He was sent to the gallows in a debatable murder case. The common man could merely squirm, on his hanging, under the jackboot. Yet, years later, when he got the opportunity to vote, the same devalued common man elected his deserving or undeserving daughter to power not once but twice.

Benazir realized soon after assuming power that she could not survive politically by rubbing on the wrong side any sector of the well-entrenched elite, the brass in particular. While the problem-ridden common man, the voter, looked up to her for the mitigation of his plight, she concentrated on what her husband called ‘the pleasant pastime of making money’. On occasions, her arrogance surpassed that of her father.

The Sharifs, who succeeded her by paving the way to power with grease money, exceeded her in denuding the public exchequer and taking the country to the brink of bankruptcy. One of them betrayed his conceit by blurting out that he felt like a Mughal prince or ‘subedar’.

In the US and Europe, there is no elite, no VIP in the Pakistani sense of the terms. The rule of law applies equally to all and sundry. Not long ago, the German Foreign Minister was cited for parking his car at the wrong place; he paid the fine. The Swedish premier routinely drove to embassy receptions in his own car. Our VIPs –not to speak of the VVIPs- can park their cars in the middle of any road, pay no bill or tax, take bank loans without surety, never be punctual at any public function, call back PIA flight after take off, ride in half a dozen official cars at one time, get even a second wife without the legal permission of the first. If a pedestrian is run down by their car, the police report may cite the dead man for jay walking.

Law making in the country is done often through ordinances; for, privilege motions take bulk of the time of the Assemblies. The sense of self-importance of the members, mainly feudal lords, is so acute that it gets offended quite easily inviting a privilege motion. The only time they really work hard is when they are fighting for more perks and privileges.

Not unoften, the parliament gives the impression of being a zoo of monkeys run by the inmates.

They are clear-headed - ‘clear’ standing for ‘clean’. That explains why they approach every issue with an open mouth. They have either no conscience or refuse to listen to it; they cannot take advice from a total stranger.

The feudal spirit that permeates the society now has spawned the dynasty system in the political parties too. The Muslim League, the PPP, the ANP, BNP, PKMAP, and JUI are all controlled by dynasties! Benazir went to the extent of getting herself declared as the ‘Chairperson for Life’ of the PPP so that she could hang on to the leadership till her son Bilawal comes of age. That is feudalism at its worst! If Murtaza Bhutto had no pretension to being the legitimate heir to his father’s political mantle, he might still be alive today.

Let us now have a quick look at the history of elitism in the country.

Weak political leadership, after the founding fathers, Jinnah and Liaquat, allowed the Civil Service to emerge as the dominant class. For over two decades, governance of the state remained largely with them, even during the Ayub era. They did indeed a commendable job following the service ethics of pre-partition days. Pakistan became an epitome of socio-economic progress.

Bhutto deprived them of their independence and constitutional rights by knocking off in his 1973 constitution the guarantees given to them in all earlier constitutions. The civil servants, thus placed at the pleasure of the Prime Minister, turned into sycophants and sought security in pelf, which they could get through the abuse of their powers. They joined the corrupt elements in the army and the landed gentry that had started wielding political power.

Pakistan inherited a land tenure system dominated by Zamindars and Jagirdars. Successive governments failed to carry out meaningful land reforms. The ones announced with much fanfare by Ayub and Bhutto were long on rhetoric but short on results. Not only that, the landlords, who had come to dominate the political field, secured exemptions from income tax, guarantees of lucrative prices for their produce and substantial subsidies on agricultural inputs.

The Ayub era gave rise to the military elite class through grants of agricultural lands in newly developed Guddu and Kotri barrages in Sindh, allocation of urban plots in various Defense societies, and executive jobs in semi-government corporations.

A new category joined the group during the Afghan war. That is of the smugglers of weapons, and the drug barons. They may not be in the parliament, but have a good number of surrogates there.

This is briefly how the rapacious elite came into existence. The crisis has already reached a stage where the leaders constitute the major part of the nation’s problems. Highest number of those elected regularly to the national and provincial assemblies belong to the upper feudal class. Their continuous appearance on the political scene is due to the well-entrenched tribal and feudal setups where chances of broader participation by even mainstream political parties are remote until these feudal lords assure them of their support.

The non-party elections of Gen. Zia enervated further the main stream parties while strengthening the hold of these tribal and feudal elements. His protégé, Nawaz Sharif, pandered to this class, subjugated the civil bureaucracy, terrorized the judiciary and showed a community of interest with the rich, but miscalculated or mishandled the most important component of the ruling elite –the army. He could not domesticate it.

The decade of Gen. Musharraf’s military rule and the PPP/Zardari rule since then have strengthened further the hold of the ruling elite over almost all levers of power in the country. Higher echelons of the judiciary and the electronic media have been playing the role of the opposition in the parliament. The meek, self-serving “friendly opposition” has abdicated its role as an adversary in the parliament, and have instead embraced avidly the offices given to them in the central and provincial seats of power.

The feudal spirit continues to permeate the society. No wonder, the urban luminaries emulate the rural aristocrats by donning highly starched white Shalwar Khamiz, sporting flashy wrist watches, walking with a swagger with a team of body guards in train, and being driven on the paved and carpeted city roads in a 4-wheel Pajero jeep!

Can the society, the people at large, continue tolerating indefinitely such false and pretentious values and suffer for long such an antiquated elitist system? Nature is said to abhor the status quo as much as illogicality. One sincerely hopes that the forthcoming elections will set right such distortions to some extent at least. Let there be some light in the life of the common man!

arifsyedhussaini@Gmail.com