Punitive governance

The Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index 2023 downgraded an 11 places back-pedalling Pakistan from a hybrid to an authoritarian regime.

The report stated that unsurprisingly elections with opposition forces subject to state repression would not bring regime change or more democracy. It also opined that the electoral process was far from being free and fair and pointed out the outsized political influence of state institutions. It gave a prophetic insight into our crumbling political order.

Pakistan’s score on the democracy index has remained above 4 since 2008. It was for the first time in 2023, that we regressed to 3.25 during the PDM government. The skewered democracy that we have today at 3.25 is worse than 2006 (3.92), when the late Gen Pervez Musharraf, a military dictator, was at the helm of affairs.

Recently, tens of thousands protested in Valencia against the Spanish government’s handling of deadly floods. They shouted “murderers” at King Felipe, Queen Letizia and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and pelted them with mud as they visited the affected areas.

In the US, with more than 396,000 employees, United Healthcare is the largest health insurance company. Instead of condolences and empathy, the recent murder of its CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan unleashed social media scorn and derision. A tweet reading “He was CEO when he was shot” garnered more than 120,000 likes.

A heinous crime that it undoubtedly is, among the many, Ivy League professors, business executives, HR leaders and tech managers shared their ordeals. They wrote how they and their loved ones had been made to suffer at the hands of the healthcare bureaucracy, gatekeeper to the $4.5 trillion healthcare system, by delaying or denying their rightful claims.

These people are not heartless anarchists or those with a criminal bent of mine. They are ordinary people and professionals toiling to fend for themselves and their families. In Valencia’s floods and Thompson’s murder, they saw an opportunity to vent out their pent-up fury against a system that instead of helping them had let them down.

In Pakistan, the people see all avenues of peaceful recourse and settlement sealed airtight. Brutally quashing the right to protest, blockading cities, arbitrary arrests, racial profiling, lodging of frivolous cases and enacting weaponised laws is punitive governance. It is the hallmark of a desperate and discredited ruling order.

Liberty and prosperity, conjoined cornerstones of democracy, are two of the most crucial imperatives ordained to any government. The former guarantees freedom from tyranny, the latter from want. Oblivious to both, what we have is a system that shows undiminished resolve to vanquish opposition or dissent only.

An unrealistically buoyant stock market is flaunted as the reward. Given our ground realities, the gravity defying surge challenges the basic laws of economics and physics. One must not forget that over the years, our prosperity barometer has also remained the number of cell phones sold and the droves that flock to Murree. Not so long ago our crowning glory was the artificially capped dollar. Reportedly, the smoke and mirror gimmick cost us $3 billion in foreign remittances alone.

Roman poet Juvenal talks about bread and circuses (we have none) in his poem Satire X. It alludes to how the rulers deliberately kept the populace in a complacent and inert state by dishing out fancy dreams and lavish shows. Even that could not save the Roman Empire.

The harbinger of this ruling dispensation was what can rightly be termed the most controversial and fractious election in our history. Some facets of its glaring anomalies have been highlighted by the Supreme Court. The recourse to the many electoral disputes were the election tribunals. Transparent adjudication could have helped Pakistan move forward.

To the contrary, nearly a year later, a mere 17 per cent cases have been decided. Fafen’s latest report on tribunal performance says seven of the 23 tribunals have yet to decide any petitions. Tellingly, till last month, four out of eight tribunals in Punjab had not heard a single petition. The other four had decided on only 10 of the 155 disputes lodged with them.

According to the Center for Research and Security Studies, the third quarter of 2024 saw a 90 per cent surge in terrorism related activities. Of 1534 fatalities in nine months, those in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan were the highest in a decade. Despite this red alert and a plethora of political issues that demand immediate resolution-based cohesion, there are calls amiss again to declare the PTI a terrorist outfit.

We also have the starkly dangerous narrative conflating anti-government with anti-state. This is akin to pitting the people against the state and branding democracy itself as a threat to national security.

The recent protest culminated in what the PTI alleges were the death of its workers with many wounded. These serious claims were countered by taunts and rapture. The information minister shifted the onus by demanding video evidence of firing in what was turned into a pitch-dark D-Chowk. This, when a PM aide himself acknowledged with callous smugness that PTI deaths were not in “double figures” while a former PML-N prime minister claimed that two dead protesters were from his village.

Democracy is the antithesis of authoritarianism. It may have public policy related structured differences; it is also a deft tool for amicable resolution and inclusive agreement of the same.

Punitive governance by those who have failed to outdo the PTI in the political field only lends credence to the prevailing sentiment. It is mirrored in Shakespeare’s definition of King John’s reign: “A scepter snatched with an unruly hand, must be boisterously maintained as gained.”

The writer is a freelance contributor. He can be reached at: miradnanaziz@gmail.com