Democracy in Pakistan has problems
by, Naseer Ahmed
- It does not challenge totalitarian influences and anti human rights cultural influences. The Nazi kind of legislation is a part of our constitution and our political parties are a bit like the communist parties where a leader or a gang is more important than its workers and voters.
- It does not strengthen the institutions which could provide relief and redress to the population. For example, the institution of the local governments does not do much to improve services and regulation at the local level. Again, this Nazi and commie thinking which does not allow national and provincial rulers to share their powers to the public.
- It does not invest in education and citizenship training. It treats ‘people of their own’ as national tragedy. Therefore, it does everything to curb individual freedoms and individual dignity.
- It trusts this wisdom of grandma and grand dad more than the most sophisticated technological advances and rights development.Therefore, women are still not equal to men and we still piss on wherever it hurts in spite of pleas about soft treading and delicate dreams.
- It does not do much to improve transparency and accountability in spite of the promises.
- It has not developed and promoted work culture based upon competency and ethics. There are baby steps, but all of the babies are soon high on opium because the democrats of the country know how to make every bright thing quite dull.
- This due process is quite foreign to our democracy. Sometimes every good law is dismissed as Jewish, Indian and western conspiracy. If some laws escape this strong net, they are caught into Soviet conspiracies.
- Poverty is still God’s will. Our democracy is a bit better than advanced democracies where poverty is the fault of poor these days. But when poverty is God’s will, our democrats are not going to commit any blasphemy against lord Almighty. Therefore, they don’t do anything to reduce it.
- The conflict resolution is a kind of thing that hurts pride. Therefore, no real efforts are made to resolve conflicts between individual and state, citizen and proxy, province and centre, city and village, military and civilians and us and foreigners.
- Religion into politics has caused so much disruption, pain and sorrow but our democrats refuse to move towards ‘self evident truths’ about life liberty and pursuit of happiness.
There are other problems like nepotism, manufacturing failures, tax collection, service industries, law and order, discrimination, terrorism ,redress, abuse, crime gangs and what not.
Related: Imran Khan and erasing the bias of a harmful totalitarian worldview by, Naseer Ahmed
The courts and fundamental rights by, Naseer Ahmed
My point is Pakistan cannot solve any of its problems without democracy. Most of these problems have been caused by the military tyrants. Another tyranny won’t solve any of these problems. Pakistan needs to express a genuine commitment to democratic principles and start working on solving its problems.
There is a history too. We tried to circumvent a genuine mandate, we ended up with our country broken in two. And that broken part is still holding the trials on war crimes and genocide.
Another dismissal of a genuine mandate resulted in a dark tyranny where state, society and individuals lost their way. We still haven’t found our way back to civilization.
Then followed, another violation of a mandate.This time, we lost our faculties to think clearly. We keep debating about the good terrorists and the bad terrorist. We even do not understand the absurdity of this debate.
Therefore, in spite of our dislike of our current democracy, we must uphold it. It is time to see this clear difference between hope and hopelessness. As long as, we have democracy, we have hopes. Hopes about solving our problems.
