Head of PPP Media Cell
Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT)’s latest survey confirmed the majority of the people of Pakistan were in favour of democracy although good governance at present was far from satisfactory. The survey did not dwell upon the question as how many people favoured democracy as a form of government. The findings of the various surveys conducted in the past clearly suggested that more than 75% people were favourably inclined towards democracy as the only way forward for the culmination of collective destiny of the nation -- the genesis of which was enshrined in the Pakistan movement and the vision of the Founder of the Nation.
Pakistan movement was the shining example of the success of the democratic movement as the new country was created through vote not bullet or as the result of armed struggle. Democracy was the ideological and intellectual basis of Pakistan that had been sadly mutilated by autocrats and religious pressure groups to suit their parochial turfs.
The PILDAT survey reflected the simple majority of the people in favour of incumbent democracy in the context of good governance. Meaning thereby, their opprobrium of dictatorial rule and rulers was unwavering as it served the political ambitions of the autocrats at the altar of the people’s aspirations. The response of the people would have been definitely in the vicinity of 90% supporting representative government over the dictatorship if the survey had ascertained the liking of the general public on this count. Dictatorship had miserably failed not only in Pakistan but also all over the world if empowerment of the people was applied as the sole criterion. In democracy, people chart out their destiny. Dictatorship, on the contrary, is of the dictator, by the dictator and for the dictator.
The PILDAT survey findings are satisfying in a way because of its pointing of the positive liking of the majority of the people for representative government. The redeeming feature of the survey clearly unfolded that despite abysmal performance of this government people still preferred democracy as their first and the only preference. Their emphatic rejection of autocrats and autocratic rule was so deep rooted that it could not be uprooted notwithstanding the poor performance of the democratic dispensation led by PML-N. It was heartening realisation among the people as it would serve a powerful deterrence against those whose waywardness of trespassing, fueled by personal despicable political ambitions at the expense of the people, begged all descriptions.
History of government and politics in Pakistan, heart-wrenchingly, is the history of disfranchising the people barring a few intermittent exceptions of democratic periods. The successive dictators also had wrought havoc of grotesque proportion like the fragmentation of the country, unleashing of gladiators of war, division of the country by injecting the deadly virus of extremism, pursuit of the proxy wars, losing Siachin to the arch enemy, Kargil debacle, suspension of the Constitution and dismissal of elected governments, and creation of fault-lines through the political engineering. All dictators who ruled this country had undoubtedly committed the crime of the highest treason and therefore their culpability was unpardonable. They all got scot free, ironically, from the clutches of the judicial system but the history had held them criminals for all times to come. The wheels of revenge of history would never stop on them.
The eras of the civilian/democratic rules in Pakistan might not have been enviable either. But, they kept the enemies of the country at bay through engagement without compromising the vital national interests. The results of the policies were amazing because not a single inch of the country’s territory was lost to enemy during all the civilian/democratic rules. All such huge territorial losses were inflicted on the country during the dictatorship’s successive rules. Instead, elected prime minister Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, retrieved thousands square miles of the country’s territory from India occupied by the enemy country in the 1971 when General Yayha was the ruler of the country.
Feroz Khan Noon, ex-prime minister of Pakistan, bought Gwadar from Oman adding this invaluable asset to the federation of the country. It’s strategic and trade potential could not be defined in words. It indeed reflected the quality of the vision of civilians to see in the future. This paragraph should be enough to dissuade the proponents of autocratic rule to display a modicum of integrity in their thoughts and articulation based on conviction. Their sticking to their stance would throw light on their alacrity to continue to grind their own axis no matter how much contempt it might invite from the people. Their intellectual and moral morbidity was ironically beyond redemption in the case.
However, the devastating legacies of the successive dictatorships should not invoke the feelings of complacency among the elected governments. These should energise the governments to ensure delivery of services to the people to desist the anti-people lobbies from rearing their ugly head again. The ongoing abysmal quality of governance should wake up the mandarins from the slumber who should focus on to improve governance in the social sector, in particular, in order to jack up the support for the people’s rule that had been on the slippery slope for the last couple of years. Bad governance was bound to disappoint the people that would create the enabling environment for the anti-people forces who loved chaos and destabilisation to implement their insidious agenda.
The government’s utmost endeavour should be to keep the morale of the people well above the threshold. In this regard, the prime minister of Pakistan is well advised to ensure his presence in the Parliament to take the people into confidence on important policy issues having bearings on all walks of national life. He is in the best position to project the performance of his government at the floor of the House to counter criticism. But, his tendency to remain absent from the House is presumed as he has no good news to share with the people. His seeking redemption in the disappearing acts is dangerous to the functioning democracy. Parliament is his strength and he should further strengthen it through his attendances in absolute terms. His absence from the sessions of the Parliament is double jeopardy. The members of the Treasury Benches tend to follow their leader and the Opposition gets frustrated because it is denied the opportunity to contribute its input on important issues facing the country.
Opposition leader Syed Khurshid Shah quite recently has expressed his frustration over the prime minister’s giving least importance to the Parliament as a leader of the House. The conduct of the Leader of the House is bound to have poor reflections on the proceedings of the House. The thin presence of the MNAs in the House has become common than exception. The situation should be rectified by the prime minster sooner the better because stakes are high and he is expected to be mindful of the indispensability of the cost-benefit narrative.
It seems PanamaLeaks have besieged the mind of the prime minister and therefore he is reluctant to face the opposition and its likely tough questioning. This ambivalence on his part is least expected from the leader of the House. In democracy, it is not possible to put the issues to rest for longer period of time because opposition parties will continue to rub the issue till the government satisfies the Opposition Benches.
In this regard, the track record of former PPP prime minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani was worth mentioning who never missed the session of the House if present in Islamabad. His conduct as the leader of the House in the face of much hostile Opposition led by the PML-N was the shining example of the functioning of the Parliament. The incumbent prime minister should take cue from him and take active part in the proceedings of the House and prove his mettle as the Parliamentary Leader of substance. He should keep the Parliament and the parliamentarians on his right side.
The prime minister may recall the decisive role of the Parliament in salvaging his government from the onslaught of the sit-in politics soon after the 2013 elections as his government was teetering on the fence. The Parliament firmly stood behind him to save democracy declaring unequivocally that no unconstitutional change was acceptable. The standing of the Parliament behind the democratic government led by the PML-N took the steam out of the sit-in politics exemplifying it from sublime to the ridiculous.
The prime minister should not push the forum of Parliament to the periphery and instead make it the center of gravity of the parliamentary democracy as per its best practices. This paradigm shift is also necessitated to augment the pro-democracy forces in the country and correspondingly weakening the anti-democratic forces and their proponents. Pakistan had enough of the politics of confrontation and cannot afford any more. The basic responsibility to address the reservations of the opposition and the people lies on the shoulder of the government of the day. The government should exhibit knack to steer the country out of the looming dangers by taking the opposition parties into confidence. The existential threat to the country emanating from the internal and external fronts calls upon the statesmanship paradigm on the part of the prime minister to make qualitative difference on the political horizon of the country. muhammadshaheedi@yahoo.com
