Given the common history of the twin neighbours, everyone wants to know why India is democratic and Pakistan

is not. For us to answer this question, it is not sufficient only to attribute our failure in democracy to our political breakdowns and military takeovers. There are deep-rooted historical, sociocultural and geopolitical factors that have been conditioning the post-independence democratic tradition in Pakistan. Surely, on their emergence as independent states through a political process, both India and Pakistan inherited a parliamentary tradition and began their statehood with a democratic path clearly charted out for them. Unlike Indias Congress party, virtually a mini-parliament with habits of debate and discourse, the Muslim League, Pakistans founding party, was wholly dominated by a few feudal families, which the British had patronised before Partition and which remained powerful enough to control politics in the newly-independent Pakistan. Even after the Muslim Leagues disintegration, the same feudalised oligarchy consisting of different men at different times under different political flags has remained in power with or without military collaboration. The feudal power structure is indeed at the root of Pakistans political decay. It has always resisted reforms in the country which it sees will strike at its own roots. India, on the other hand, managed to forge a democratic constitution by 1950 and remained steadfast in its democratic experience, holding elections every five years, while we in Pakistan saw a continuing cycle of governmental changes by non-political means. India persisted with the basic norms of parliamentary democracy, whereas we found salvation in our own systemic aberrations with no parallel anywhere in the world. Instead of reinforcing the unifying elements of our nationhood, our power-hungry politicians have always succumbed to narrowly-based, self-serving temptations. They rejected the popular will freely expressed in the December 1970 elections, and instead of exploring political remedies to the resultant crisis, went along with a military solution. It was the height of political opportunism and a humiliating military debacle that broke the country apart. Our crafty political rulers learnt no lessons and are repeating the same mistakes. The very reasons that precipitated the 1971 tragedy remained unaddressed in the new Constitution. Ours is the story of a society that has been going round and round in aimless circles for 65 years. Besides the military and the civil bureaucracy, which wielded real authority, we saw a number of politicians being cycled through political and economic crises. Instead of remaining consistent in democracy, we have been experimenting with distorted forms of government at different times and sometimes, all at the same time. At the moment, we have neither a parliamentary nor presidential form of government. We only wear a parliamentary mask. In practice, it is the president who wields authority. We still have not been able to evolve a political system that responds to the needs of an ethnically and linguistically diverse population. We dont even seem to realise that, temperamentally, we are a presidential nation and are not fit for a parliamentary form of government. The problem is that the overbearing feudal, tribal and elitist power structure

in Pakistan has been too deeply entrenched to let any systemic change take place. It doesnt suit them. They have reduced parliament into wooden marionettes whose strings they control at their own will. For our parliamentarians, legislating is a business beyond their capacity and alien to their temperament. The only laws they can make are those needed to serve the interests of their own fraternity, as was witnessed recently in the post-haste last minute adoption of life-long lavish perks and privileges for themselves at the cost of the state exchequer. Even the last three constitutional amendments were not without motivated political ends. As one links the loose ends in the caretaker prime ministers selection drama, the picture becomes clear. The Twentieth Amendment not only legitimised the election of 28 lawmakers in by-polls suspended by the apex Court for not being in conformity with the Eighteenth Amendment requirement for full composition of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), but also put in place a highly questionable and non-representative process for the selection process of a caretaker prime minister. The whole process smacked of politicallymotivated ingenuity aimed at giving the ruling party an advantage in any voting within the ECP. The doubtful credentials of the ECP were abundantly visible in the final selection of the caretaker prime minister. A petition has already been moved in the Supreme Court challenging the authority given under the Twentieth Amendment to the ECP to nominate federal and provincial caretaker set-ups in case the assemblies failed to do so. This authority under Article 9(3) of Article 224-A of the Constitution is repugnant to the Constitution itself because the National Assembly can neither abdicate nor delegate its authority to the ECP, which is not an elected body, nor can it transfer its supremacy or sovereignty to any other institution as all other institutions are non-elected with no popular mandate. The fossilised ECPs calibre and neutrality is writ large in its vacillating decisions, some being no less than antics. The scrutiny process is a big joke with uninstructed returning officers behaving like comedians. The hemming and hawing ECP could not even stand by one good decision it had taken in giving voters a democratic free choice to reject the entire slate of candidates by stamping the none of the above box on the ballot paper. This would have been a revolutionary step towards freeing the country of the same old known and tested status-quo politicians. Interestingly, as if already there was not enough chaos created by a variety of performers and jokers on our political scene, we now find a recycled dictator being floated back into our turbulent political waters. Everyone knows who launched him and with what purpose. What an irony, the sixth largest country in the world and a veritable nuclear power is today being controlled from outside through a couple of our neighbourly kingdoms and sheikhdoms serving as their Trojan horses. One of these brotherly states is also a favourite sanctuary for our high profile fugitive absconders. Right now, facing corruption charges, two of them, a former federal minister and an Ogra chief, in defiance of judicial orders, are luxuriating in its regal benevolence.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 13th, 2013.