In Wild West themed movies, the high point is the scene where the good cowboy and the bad gunslinger face off in the middle of a street to see who can draw his gun and shoot the other before getting shot himself. Over the years, Hollywood has given us many classic draw scenes in films like High Noon, Gunfight at the OK Corral, 3:10 to Yuma, and others. But the all-time-greatest draw scene occurred in an Italian production, Sergio Leone’s classic The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, when actors Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef featured in a long-drawn-out triple face-off. The suspense was electric, with dramatic close-ups of the three pairs of eyes. The three right hands trembled inches from their respective holsters, each character knowing that whoever moved first would be immediately shot by the other two...unless he got both of them first. This draw was the stuff of true classic cinema.
Equally tense have been the events of the last several months now, with a paralysed nation tensely watching the duels and face-offs in process on our national scene. And the number of actors in the face-off is many times greater than in the movie. But who is ‘good’ and who is ‘bad’ and who is ‘ugly’, I will not venture to conjecture.
Muslim League rally on Direct Action Day, 1946
Let me assert that, in these columns, I make no pretence at fine prediction of political developments and changes. My preoccupations are with history and with the the sociological infrastructure. What is going on is a disorderly process (as the processes of evolution usually are) in which each state institution is trying to magnify its influence at the cost of the others. And the government is the juiciest and most visible target…and prize.
Now, it needs to be borne in mind that all this turmoil and tension has very little to do with the realities at the grassroots. None of the battling institutions has any real formula, ability, or willingness to combat insurrection, violent crime, poverty, economic pressures, terrorism, incompetence and isolation. These issues are only point-scorers for our duellers as they chorus: “Go, PMLN, go!”
Could one really call these first eleven years democratic? Or even constitutional?
The question that remains is: What else will ‘go’ with the present setup? Will democracy be a victim of the Party’s fall? Not necessarily — at least, not on this count alone. But it does seem that all our drawing room chatterers, TV talking heads, and social media paranoid voices are convinced that ‘politicians’ are an inferior species of wildlife. By ‘politicians’, they mean those who have been constitutionally elected to power by the people. Those who have illegitimately seized power by force of arms are exempted from such condemnation. From this, they conclude that constitutional democracy is not workable in this Land of the Pure.
A quick survey of our past periods of constitutional rule would seem to strengthen such a case. How good, for example, were those first eleven years of independent national existence, before Ayub Khan’s coup d’etat? Well, to begin with, the All-India Muslim League, which had swept the Muslim seats in the elections of 1946, was not an orthodox political party at all. It was a movement for national self-determination and, until the very eleventh hour (03 June 1947, to be precise), it had not been at all clear that that this self-determination would take the shape of an independent state. Thus, there had simply been no preparation, nor even directives or conceptual clarity, for running the new state. Moreover, many of the key Muslim League leaders (for example Liaquat Ali Khan, H. S. Suhrawardy, Ispahani, and even the Quaid himself) had been elected from constituencies that were not now part of Pakistan at all.
Then, in one year, came the horrors of Partition, the Kashmir War, the death of the Quaid and, in another three years, the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan. As Prime Minister, Khwaja Nazimuddin became entangled in the Ahmeddiya issue and was thrown out in a year-and-a-half by Ghulam Mohammad’s coup d’etat. In 5-and-a-half years, no Constitution had been drafted and governmental confusion had prevailed, particularly at a provincial level. Could one really call these first eleven years democratic? Or even constitutional?
The next democratic interregnum – that of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto – came about nearly two decades later. It was constitutional in the sense that a valid democratic Constitution was finally promulgated.But could the epithet ‘democratic’ be used to describe this era? Tolerance, dialogue, and compromise – the essentials of democracy – were not notable features of Mr Bhutto’s overwhelming personality. He ran roughshod over so many individuals, groups, and classes that he generated powerful and unforgiving enemies, all of whom banded together in a massive united front, encouraged by the humiliated armed forces and perhaps (as some suggest) a superpower, to unseat him. The only compromises he made were with the most reactionary elements in society: the feudals and the mullahs!
The black eleven years of General Zia’s tyranny ended with the gleam of light brought by the triumphal return of the People’s Princess. But Benazir Bhutto, for all her exceptional qualities, made secret ‘deals’ with an establishment personified by Ghulam Ishaq Khan. One parliamentary dissolution after another followed, each succeeded by a caretaker administration (an extraordinary Pakistani innovation) and pre- and post-rigged elections with low turn-outs. The political instability of the 1990s was a product of the continuous tussle between the political parties and the military-bureaucratic oligarchy –scarcely a salubrious environment for the flowering of democratic values and institutions!
Through these years and those of Musharraf that followed, the oligarchy had been expropriating whatever resources the country generated or received, leaving a trail of backwardness, unemployment, illiteracy, poverty and despair. Worse, the agenda of these peculiarly ignorant rulers required the indoctrination, training and arming of fanatical hordes. It is these that have since been waging war against the people and state of Pakistan.
Was the integrity of Pakistan endangered as a result of these onslaughts? In any case, let us remember that there are political and social fates worse than the falling apart of a state. The mighty Soviet Union fell to pieces before our eyes; but its successor states — after some initial setbacks — seem to be stronger and more vibrant than before. The same can be said of India, and of Pakistan itself, in our own emergence from the disintegration of British India.
The objective fact is that there are three conditions that can be even worse than disintegration for the people of a country. These are: extended foreign military occupation (think Iraq), suffocation under a stagnant dictatorship (think Egypt or Myanmar or the former USSR) and the anarchic horror of a ‘failed state’, such as Rwanda, Somalia,Libya, and Afghanistan.
Now, constitutional democracy has a way of diffusing intra-society conflicts and thereby stabilising the state. It provides outlets for articulating the views and interests of the different classes, regions, and groups that comprise a state and establishes the institutional mechanisms for their mediation.By the exercise of fundamental rights, it stimulates freedom of thought and cultural evolution. By ensuring a degree of equality before the law, it encourages economic investment, growth and development. By involving all social and political stakeholders in the affairs of the state, it consolidates and strengthens the state.
Our constitutional dispensation, for all its defects, for all the righteous outrage expressed by figures such as Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui or Senator Raza Rabbani, remains rooted in an essentially democratic soil. As regards the present turmoil, what I do believe is that, despite the former Prime Minister’s enormous political footprint, particularly among the business community of Punjab and the self-proclaimed lovers of democracy elsewhere, one way or another, sooner or later, those who have the draw on him will manage to ‘get’ Nawaz.
