Positive politics

Politics sits at the apex of a nation-state. It links the society to the state and acts as the supreme authority safeguarding the interests of both. A nation-state prospers and remains a valid entity only when both benefit mutually from this relationship.

Harold Laski had this to say in 1923 on constitutional government: “It is possible that so long as the process of legislation can offer…solid benefit the translation to a new social order will be accomplished in peace. But…the benefits must affect those who feel that they have now too small a stake in the present order to make its preservation a matter of urgency to themselves.” Truer words have never been spoken. Three deductions are apparent.

One, does Pakistan’s politics understand this basic postulation of democratic principles? Even if our political experience of the last five years must deliver only one conclusive benefit – the heart of this engagement between the state and the nation strengthened by mutual benefit and shared stakes – of reorienting politics to meet the essential needs of a representative governing structure and imbibes it as an abiding lesson, the suffering that the people have gone through during this period of dismal political experience can be worth the pain.

But whether it is really so remains moot, and will only be tested when the next lot move in after the coming elections. If they fail as well, the resulting failure for both the nation and the state will be lasting and irrecoverable.

Two, the pervasive argument in the above formulation for the survival of such an arrangement of power and governance as a system is based around mutual benefit. Politics in Pakistan is limited to being electoral with little to do with the public-service part of it, entirely dismissing the portion of benefit that must flow to the electorate.

The aim for any prospective politician is to find an entry to power through vote without recourse to the subsequent responsibility to the nation that politics is supposed to keep linked with the state loosening the bond in nation-state. This has been the core failure of the political order in Pakistan’s political experience, defeating the underlying premise on how a representative democratic system can endure.

Power devolves within the political structures alone in a self-sustaining exercise as a consequence making it mutually agreeable for the 1,142 members of the national and provincial assemblies and the Senate to jealously guard this arrangement and position of privilege. That it also enables them to share the spoils from the state’s largesse remains the single-most damaging consequence where the state continues to weaken from within, while the society lies abandoned without a guiding intervention by the state.

Revenue, which strengthens the state and which, when applied to the various needs of the society make a society resilient, comes with a system of taxation that should target those that can pay.

In a system where politics is designed to remain a protected fief where only the moneyed must venture, the nexus between money, power and politics results in a single apex where all three reside in one entity – the dominating political structure that constitutes the legislature and the executive. Such exploitative hierarchy within a political system simply refuses to bring in equitable benefits to all stakeholders and weakens its own premise as a consequence.

Three, if indeed the nation and the state become two separate entities, delinked because of the abysmal performance of the political apex, it results in an inevitable collapse of the structure. A state would be a failed state then.

In Pakistan trends of a weakened state and a fragmented society are discernible. The society has completely lost faith in the state, at least in its apex power structure which consists of the politicians. There continues to be hope in the higher judiciary, which people resort to in the expectation that it might deliver.

The military, a traditional saviour to replace a non-performing political system, is still counted as a reluctant hope which may intervene as a final resort to secure the nation-state from disintegrating. The military can cause a course correction but it is ill-equipped to rectify structural deficiencies or a system built around a polity decayed to the core. This perpetuates the belief that democracy is the only workable system to keep the nation-state structure together.

The case of Balochistan is enough to illustrate the conflation of the three derivations of the Laskian formulation on representative government. There are four parallel maladies that afflict Balochistan. It has a nationalist insurgency rooted in the political missteps of Pakistan’s political history. Little has been done to deal with this, causing it to gain strength with the passage of time.

Since 9/11 another insurgency in Fata has expanded its outreach into Balochistan through unrelenting spate of terror attacks causing Baloch-Pakhtun and Shia-Sunni divides to develop in an already badly fragmented society.

The killings of the Hazaras have brought to the fore the total collapse of the state machinery in enabling security of life and property to its citizens, the most basic covenant of the citizens with the state. When last week’s blasts killed 116 Hazaras in Quetta and they agitated for 69 hours with their dead by their side, the absence of the political leadership – any political leadership: local, provincial or Baloch – to remove their anguish and pain was a telling failure of the system.

The former chief minister of Balochistan remains the most deplorable manifestation of the ills of the politics of province. The governor’s rule and emergency are but only a reluctant admission of the inadequacies that have come to dominate the system.

Dr Tahirul Qadri’s complaint is about the inability of the current political system to deliver. Either the structure – federal, parliamentary, first-past-the-post – or those constituting it will need to be modified, or another will need to created. The usual argument in favour of the federated constitutional structure is in regional sensitivities of self-rule and preservation of tribal culture.

Maliks, sardars and dynastic heads therefore remain firmly in control of the political process as the only plausible electables from their regions. The way out is that either those who wish to retain control of the political process mend their ways, or a broadening of the political and hierarchical base of the political parties to make them more inclusive.

The next elections, and how the resulting political setup will perform, will be the key in determining whether the current system suits Pakistan, or if it can ensure its sustenance as a composite nation-state. If the system indeed changes into a participatory one in the real sense, with sharing of benefits between the society and the state, it will be sustained.

Otherwise, consideration must be given to a change in structures and processes. The Pakistani state and its society remain immersed in incessant strife, and positive politics alone can lead it out of the crisis. If it fails again, it may spell doom for the present state structure in Pakistan.

The writer is a retired air-vice marshal of the Pakistan Air Force and served as its deputy chief of staff. Email: shhzdchdhry @yahoo.com