By Riaz Missen.
The way out of the problem that Westminster Model has posed to the peaceful and dignified survival of Pakistan, is to see it off and try the presidential system instead. How to do it?
Political parties of Pakistan are really at crossroads. The PPP is a spent force. The case of regional parties is not that much different. None knows about the future of the PML-N after it retires, willingly or otherwise, from the corridors of power.
Politics of the old parties has reached a dead end, for they have achieved what they have been campaigning for since long. Take the case of the ANP. After it succeeded in giving NWFP an ethnic identity, it has evaporated into the air.
The MQM had a better chance to survive if it had not struck too much compromises with the PPP over autonomous local governments and job quotas. What its politics yielded to Karachi was only anarchy.
Though some sections of the society are attaching high hopes with the PTI and or terming it a new force but seeing its politics so far one is bound to wonder aloud whether it will ever take some steady and socially approved course to achieve the goal of New Pakistan.
The most interesting case is that of the JUI-F, leaving aside the JI, which has set new traditions of opportunism while guarding its core interest of not compromising over the religious credentials of the state.
What the politically have yielded through their bid to amend the constitution, is an ethnic federation where the question of socio-economic development have been left to the federal units. The Centre has to calm and neutral if provinces failure to deliver, the necessary public goods — most importantly the security of life and property.
The political parties seem to be fanatically concerned with democracy as a goal, not as a means to peace and growth. Despite their tall claims, these were not they, or to say their struggle, that had won democracy for Pakistan but the very forces that had brought its end cleared its way as well.
While political parties have retained authoritarian decision-making structures and majority of them are not organized and, hence, depend on the street power of fanatical religious and ethnic groups, blame ‘enemies of democracy’ every time they confront accountability.
Of the course, the way forward for the political parties to reorient themselves strictly believing that democracy is the future of the country. To be an effective stakeholder of Pakistan, they have to restructure themselves, reorient their policies and answer some mindboggling questions they have themselves posed while undertaking the parawise revision of the Constitution (18th Amendment).
See how the political parties acted opportunistically as for as amending the Constitution was concerned. The leading political parties cunningly put into effect two-party system as per their understanding of 2006 (Charter of Democracy). The PPP championed the cause of smaller provinces on the question of autonomy and distribution of fiscal resources while PML-N remained contended with the third term of Nawaz Sharif and shelving the issue of new province.
PML-N did not object to the 7th NFC Award or the deletion of concurrent list as Punjab, which it was lording over, did not lose much in new arrangements. That the question of water reservoirs over Indus River has to be decided in the Council of Common Interest (CCI) also did not bother it very much.
The case of ANP was simple: it wanted the renaming of NWFP vis-a-vis the fact that a particular linguistic group had got majority there in the course of time. Unmindful of the consequences of the ripples, most importantly the sense of alienation, the move would create in such a multi-linguistic province, the PPP and the PML-N agreed.
Come to devolution, its spirit seems to be lost. Power and resources have been devolved to Karachi, Lahore, Quetta and Peshawar but there is no arrangement to pass the same on to the grassroots level. Not a single province can claim it has given a local bodies system, which empowers the people at grassroots level to decide their fate vis-à-vis the provisions of the basic necessities of life.
The naive stratagem of the leading parties has ended up in the phenomenal rise of the PTI, which has tried to articulate the frustration of the masses over their apathy towards their genuine problems.
What is mysterious about the PTI is that it is short of any clear plan to execute the agenda of devolution up to the grassroots level. The party has no prospects to matter outside KP except in some constituencies of Punjab. So the story of hung Parliament will go on.
Pakistan’s governance structure needs overhaul. It is something which the political parties have failed to do due the reason that they have been hijacked by vested interests. It is extraordinary wealth and the authoritarian decision-making structure which keeps PML-N rolling; it is the ethnic card which PPP is always willing to show for good share in political system. The street power of religious and ethnonationalism groups keep their gains intact.
Those willing to restructure Pakistan as per the requirements of global age are bound to concentrate on the unholy nexus between militancy and politics, which the parliamentary democracy is that ready to accommodate. It is what that happened in 1973, when the Constitution was framed, and it is the case as it has become subject to amendment.
While agreed on the point that there is no need of new federal units at all, the smaller provinces have struck arrangement to neutralize the dominance of Punjab in the Lower House of the Parliament by dominating the Senate. While they have secured provincial autonomy, it does not concern them who dominate the Centre.
Of course, the Constitution has to be revised to accommodate the vision of the Quaid-e-Azam, which he spelled in his address to the 1st Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947: “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State.”
Ethnicity and religiously inspired nationalism has pushed the politics to dead end. Even general elections seem to be no remedy. If such a democratic exercise ends up in a hung Parliament this time too, the country will move nowhere. There will be no end of regressive taxation; ecology and environment will remain neglected; and the standards of life will not improve. The powerlessness of the people will keep translating into chaos and anarchy of the kind we have right now.
The way out of the problem that Westminster Model has posed to the peaceful and dignified survival of Pakistan, whereby it has fuelled ethnic and sectarian militancy, is to see it off and try the presidential system instead. How to do it? Let’s not forget something that has bothered us a lot: the doctrine of necessity. Who should preside over the transition period, is something serious. The best course in this regard should be the one which led to the formation of military courts whereby some legislators sobbed, cried and felt ashamed but voted for them.
