An imperfect process
By Ikram Sehgal

Democracy represents the will of the majority. Our major problems stem from experimenting with various models of ‘imperfect’ democracies. A social state in a true democracy is one in which everyone has equal rights without hereditary or arbitrary differences of rank or privilege.

By this simple yardstick alone, do we really have democracy in Pakistan? Is every adult vote cast freely in our country in the manner that democracy requires it to be meaningful? Are the votes cast recorded fairly? Democracy means government of the people, by the people and for the people. Does the majority really rule or are we hostage to a powerful minority? – one that can tamper at will with the results at the ballot box?

The problem is that the leaders who get elected by the people to rule over the country are reluctant to give power to the people to rule over their own communities.

The existing threat to democracy in Pakistan is feudalism. Marc Bloch defined ‘feudal society’ as a warrior aristocracy bound by vassalage in which a lord was a noble who held land, called a fief. Those granted possession by the lord were called vassals, expected to serve their lord.

Wealth was derived from agriculture organised not by market forces but by customary labour services owed by serfs to landowning nobles. Rulers who adapted feudal institutions to increase their power were called ‘feudals’, their governments labelled ‘feudal monarchies’. In sharp contrast to the rest of the world, this medieval system has continued to exist and flourish to this day in Pakistan, masquerading under the façade of ‘democracy’.

Honourable exceptions aside, this absolute power of the feudals stems from a combination of their vast agriculture holdings, coupled with the total subservience by the civil servants and police officers – of their choice – posted in their constituencies. This control makes the landlord an all-powerful master, able to critically influence the future of those under his area of dominance.

The feudals’ claim to electoral legitimacy comes from forcing people to vote for them. And if that cannot be done, then manipulating the casting and/or counting of the vote through their designated public officials at the polling booth and higher up the rigging-of-votes ladder.

There must be intelligence reports about how the rural seats in Sindh were manipulated by packing the electoral machinery with the PPP’s nominees. On a smaller scale the PTI was deprived of some seats in Punjab. Indeed the worsening moral, social, economic and political crisis in Pakistan can be attributed to a few thousand families in the agricultural sector. Armed with such a monopoly of economic power, they can easily pre-empt political power.

The ‘new feudals’ have adopted the trappings of the landed gentry, having accumulated wealth either through legitimate means of commerce and industry, or through blatant corruption by misusing their powers as civil servants or military officers. The only way to eliminate the curse of feudalism is by empowering the people at the grassroots level. This the provincial governments are reluctant to do. Consider the Election Commission of Pakistan recently turning down the pleas of Sindh and Balochistan to further delay local bodies elections.

India has emerged as a democratic polity primarily because of the abolition of feudalism from its very inception. The Muslim League perpetuated and consolidated this system in Pakistan because it was itself a feudal party while Congress was always mainly anti-feudal.

Displaying pragmatism and flexibility the Supreme Court accepted the ECP’s Civil Miscellaneous Application (CMA) requesting the announcing of a new schedule for holding LB elections in the provinces. This could have embroiled parliament and the superior judiciary in a standoff over institutional boundaries.

After the local bodies were discontinued three years ago elections should have been held – well before the last general elections. The SC did remind the federal and provincial governments that they were duty-bound as per the constitution to ensure participation of the general public in the administrative, political and financial affairs by establishing the local bodies system.

The failings of the Musharraf regime in its later years notwithstanding, the LB system introduced by him – although ridden with anomalies – was a positive move. Being the core unit for democracy and the base of the democratic system, the legitimacy of any functioning democracy can only be derived from the grassroots level through local bodies.

The system introduced by Musharraf ensured that not only did citizens start to have their problems solved at the grassroots level but more importantly it brought community participation into the body politic of the nation. Leadership from the lowest tier to the highest echelons must vest in those who represent the real majority of the people. Those who aspire to be candidates for the national or provincial assemblies or the Senate must be elected in their constituencies at the grassroots tier of the local bodies.

If a person cannot get at least a few thousand votes at the basic unit level, what are his credentials for candidacy at the higher level? Our indirect Senate elections are shameful and an insult to the name of democracy since seats are openly auctioned. This can be avoided only by having direct elections for every Senate seat.

More importantly, we need to reform the basic electoral system. Translating the democratic aspirations of the people into reality through the first-past-the-post system only ensures that a powerful minority will come into power. It is no secret that the winning candidate depends upon a core of voters who prefer him only because their closed society wills them to do so.

For countries beset with religious, sectarian, ethnic, etc schisms, a run-off election is mandatory if the majority is not obtained in the first electoral vote in a single constituency. The voters ultimately have two stark choices instead of the multiple ones in the first round. A run-off election will put any special interest groups against the will of the majority and makes an election difficult to rig and manipulate.

Democracy can only prevail when the majority vote prevails. In the process Shias will have to align with Sunnis, Awans with Rajputs, Mohajirs with Sindhis, and so on. Only candidates who command the confidence of the majority of the eligible electorate will get elected.

To avoid frustration and marginalising smaller parties, 50 percent of the available seats should go to the losing candidates of the political parties on the basis of the percentage of the total votes cast individually in each constituency to give them voice in parliament through ‘proportional representation’. Any party with a minimum of five percent of the vote nation-wide has representation in the assemblies.

What use is democracy to the individual when the various freedoms are not available at his (or her) doorstep and s/he does not have a say in the governance of his/her immediate community? For Pakistan to be saved we must change the system to reflect the correct interpretation of democracy, not one that works in favour of feudals, the rich and powerful, the influentials and special interest groups.

The writer is a defence and political analyst. Email: ikram.sehgal@wpplsms.com