Make politics ordinary

Those who care for historical comparison may note that in 1988, General Zia’s children of dictatorship were voting for a democratic revolution promised by a waving Benazir Bhutto from atop a truck in Lahore. For the 2013 elections, General Musharraf’s children came out to vote for a clean and pious revolution led by a bat-waving Imran Khan whose campaign ended atop a lift in Lahore.
The comparison is to make a symbolic point not a literal one. Benazir came in the wake of a repressive religious dictatorship and won the nation. Khan stayed the course after a liberal but paralysed, inefficient and rudderless government was voted out and he may have scraped victory of one province. Benazir was never invested in revolutionary change but her party and its followers clung for too long to slogans and the power of such an imaginary long after it had turned completely counter-revolutionary.
Similarly, Khan’s offer of change was so invested in divinity and destiny that it probably scared the ordinary voter who looks for more tangible, pragmatic and immediate returns. It’s not that people do not desire radical change but more than that, if history has been testament to anything it is that revolutions may be interruptions – but even the velvet kind don’t come through routine ballot-casting. Yet, too many of us are intent on interpreting a pragmatic event like general elections as an act of revolution.
Given our anti-democratic history, over-investing in elections is understandable but to read an administrative public service as reflective of some meta-transformative rebirth is misplaced. All the NGO, ‘youth’ and ‘radical’ talk of democracy being the means to an end that will allow the subalterns to rise out of the dust towards class equality is just talk. It is not cynical to observe that voting is a method of reinforcing or replacing a government and it is the only fair means that we can trust. To expect it to deliver a revolution is to make the electoral process extraordinary. When that doesn’t deliver we are bound to be disappointed, but only due to our own inflated expectations.
The disappointment of those who expected different results in 2013 does not mean the people or the system failed. On the contrary, perhaps for the first time a working system and the veteran unexcited voter proved that elections are just about casting aspirations in a box. The reclaiming of this ordinary act of citizenry also sent a message to the anti-democratic interruption by what is euphemistically called ‘the establishment’ but with reference to our history (documented due to the Asghar Khan case – thank you, Salman Akram Raja) really just means the army and the intelligence services. The message is: we prefer ordinary, flawed civilians to run our government.
Additionally, analysts are accurate when they say that the simple act of turning up to vote in the murderous environment created by the Taliban defeated the myth that the militants represent some revolutionary, anti-imperialist, Shariah-governance aspirations that inspires the ‘common’ Pakistani. However, here too it is important to remember that no matter how critical a defiance, this was of symbolic worth and is not an actual solution to the issue of religious militancy. A simple reminder is the number of murdered ANP members and their children over the last month.
If political expectations are not revolutionary in themselves, why do landed leaders in the metropolis use the vocabulary of revolution and expect to win ordinary votes? The flawed thinking lies in the presumption that poor people must want class revolution, the youth must want change, women must want emancipation, and minorities must want secularism. In most cases, people want to negotiate for some land to farm on, practical housing and basic education to secure the future of their children.
Most women want to be protected from domestic violence and maternal deaths. Many minorities defend and instrumentalise their faith for political and developmental ends. Of course those on the margins want out of the oppressive landless holes they are trapped in. But do they expect a revolution through their representatives in parliament?
Closer to matters of governance is the fact that people usually just want basic security and services, some freedoms and respect and recognition for their persons. More likely, they want governments to enable conditions that afford them a more level playing field and protect their rights from being usurped. It’s not an exciting proposal but most Pakistanis do not crave the kind of adventurous hopes that we impose on them. Instead, they negotiate treacherous lives which depend on simple things like getting to work on affordable and safe public transportation and that they will not be exploited or harassed at their workplaces.
Most people want the opportunities that are denied them not only because the government doesn’t provide these but because it puts up obstacles by imposing its own development schemes. Most people do not benefit from these projects because these are not the demands emerging from a local governance system. When such local systems are disbanded in preference for grand Islamabad-based governance, then these needs and requirements become invisible. If you cannot hear the demands and depend on your own received wisdom then the only vote you’re likely to get is your own.
This is not to pretend that other factors do not feature in our voting patterns. The proposal is only that the bleeding-heart bourgeoisie should grow out of this romanticised notion of heralding in ‘real’ democracy or the pretence that we are benevolently representing ‘the people’ in casting our votes for our preferred candidate. Just vote as an ordinary citizen and not on behalf of others and stop thinking that to do so is to start a revolution. It’s just an ordinary political process – embrace it. Leave the revolution to the people who know what ends they politic for and how to scale and stage these.
The writer is a sociologist based in Karachi. Email: afiyazia@yahoo.com