IS she tall, fair and beautiful? Does she have a pleasing personality? Are temperament, patience and perseverance her strong points? Above all, does she have it in her to make the marriage last?
You could be forgiven for construing these as vital ingredients for match-making in the classified section of your local daily. But in the Pakistani milieu, this “she” may well be democracy!
And just how does one arrive at the similarities?
The ‘tall’ in the configuration may represent the length or duration of democracy (which, save for post-1971 elections, has never seen an elected government complete its tenure. For the record, the last one also did but three prime ministers changed hands).
‘Fair’ has many connotations but here, it obviously refers to the complexion. In that case, a true depiction is not ‘fair’ but dark. All conspiracies against democracy are usually hatched in the dark as well.
The latest is that sooner rather than later, Musharraf may disband the coalition before it gets him.
As for ‘beautiful’, it is doubtful if the description fits the bill since even democracy’s good name has been besmirched so many times that one tends to lose count.
There are fewer apprehensions about the ‘pleasing personality’ of democracy per se though in the Pakistani milieu, the cult overrides the system.
Therefore, you have the unlovely spectacle of every Tom, Dick and Harry gravitating to the cult like a magnet (Asif Zardari, Nawaz Sharif, Altaf Hussain — you get the drift).
Democracy’s biggest losing streak in Pakistan lies in the ‘temperament, patience and perseverance’ part. None of these virtues can be attributed to any purveyors of the system in the republic.
It is said no man or woman is an island, that we’re more like connected pieces of land. This certainly does not apply to democracy or the practitioners of the trade in Islamabad. Democrats of our land have resembled more like jealous wives, if at all!
The final question in the classified refers to the capacity to ‘make the marriage last’. Here, democracy truly comes a cropper.
But for once, there is something more sinister to contend than merely the behaviour of the power-wielder. To be sure, even if the power-wielder is bad, how can one justify giving the system a bad name?
In Pakistan, that’s exactly the predicament: democracy gets a raw deal by both its proponents and critics. Worse still, it is treated like a mistress by the establishment and a handmaiden by the army, which, of course, arbiters to itself what is good for the nation.
It is a sad reflection on the state of the nation, rather than democracy — and it is pertinent to make that distinction — that people tend to question the very efficacy of the system, as if it was a curse, forced down upon them.
No doubt, democrats with a parasitic disposition for making good on their time in power have played a part in giving rise to such misleading notions.
But it is really thanks to the ill-conceived propaganda of anti-democratic forces — and there is no bigger than the military itself — that people are led to believe there is something wrong with the system, rather than its practitioners or godfathers in khakis.
For starters, democracy is not just a system of governance, but a culture that is shaped by a steady course in tolerant and wise hands. In short, it is a continually evolving process.
In Pakistan, the nation has been perpetually short-changed on this count.
Small wonder, we have never seen the course run full distance apart from the one-time Zulfikar Ali Bhutto regime (the last one, as stated earlier, was a kitchen that saw three chefs).
True to form, Bhutto’s term, too, was cut short by a military despot, who then connived to send him to the gallows.
To come back to the debate, the establishment-military combine have, over the years, successfully implanted the view that democracy is ‘not suited to us’ and also, that it is a ‘borrowed concept’ alien to our environment.
The reluctantly retired general Musharraf never tires of giving it a neat gloss, propounding on its Westminster roots on the one hand, and differing on its application in the Pakistani milieu, on the other.
During his unbridled reign, he loved to supplement his views with the unraveling of the successive governments of two former prime ministers, whom he excluded from the 2002 elections with a single stroke of pen, thus laying the ghost of democracy that he deems unfit, at rest.
In the last version, he never had to contend with Benazir and successfully kept out Sharif.
What he deliberately never shed kindred light on is the fact that it is the institution he once represented, which has had a central role — whether upfront or behind the curtains — in the Machiavellian scheme of things.
No elected government in Pakistan’s history, save for the one-time Bhutto administration in the Seventies, has had a free hand in foreign policy and defence budget, to name two decisive areas of governance.
Dictator Zia’s rape of the constitution with the insertion of Article 52 (b), which allowed the president the right to axe an elected government is a classic example of who really ruled the roost.
Even today, the president remains the supreme commander of the armed forces — the fountainhead of power as we know it.
The point of argument is plain simple: if the army thinks democracy brings looters and plunderers at the helm then, they could check the slide with all the power at their disposal.
For this, they did not need intervene by throwing the baby out with the bathwater and holding the fort sanctimoniously every few years. After all, haven’t they always had their way with whatever they wanted?
The expanse and reach of the media in the last couple of years as well as a sustained movement for the independence of judiciary, a few knocks notwithstanding, offer the only silver lining in an otherwise moth-eaten democratic edifice.