Daily Times editorial Oct 15, 2011

Democratic culture and norms

The National Assembly (NA) on Thursday resembled nothing more than a boxing/wrestling ring. The protagonists of near-fisticuffs were the PML-N and the MQM, two parties between whom bad blood has been in evidence of late. The fracas started when Leader of the Opposition Chaudhry Nisar, while vociferously opposing a bill moved by the federal government to create a DHA on land allegedly belonging to Punjab province, suddenly and inexplicably rounded on the MQM and its leadership in language that soon generated a matching response from the other side and this inspired some young hotheads on both sides to make threatening physical moves towards each other. Fortunately, government coalition MNAs and saner parliamentarians managed to keep the two sides separate, otherwise a free for all was in the offing. Not since the 1950s, when the Speaker of the NA died in an assault in parliament, has Pakistan seen the like of the scenes witnessed in the NA on what can only be dubbed ‘black Thursday’. It may be salutary to point out that the death of the Speaker in that unspeakable episode was followed soon thereafter by the first military coup and imposition of martial law in the country.
Chaudhry Nisar is an effective critic when he marshals his facts and arguments, but he has shown a disconcerting tendency to get carried away by the exuberance of his own verbosity and descend rapidly into language skirting close on disrespect if not abuse. If the Treasury benches are expected to uphold democratic parliamentary norms in accommodating their colleagues on the opposition benches, how much more is the responsibility of the Leader of the Opposition to set a good example? Being an effective parliamentarian also imposes the need for restraint, discipline and civility. The problem of course is not confined to the person of the worthy Leader of the Opposition. He is merely one of the more prominent representatives of an authoritarian mindset that afflicts our polity and society. Such a mindset is often so convinced of the rightness of its position as not to brook any dissent or obstacle to its realisation. Democracy, on the other hand, sets rules for behaviour inside and outside parliament and imposes on its adherents the requirement of patience, even when there may be ‘provocation’.
The reasons for the existence of this authoritarian mindset are not difficult to discover. A society with considerable tribal and feudal hangovers in terms of its economic and social structures must be open to the risk of these structural hangovers producing their concomitant ways of looking at the world. It is doubly unfortunate therefore that instead of transcending such aberrations from democratic culture and behaviour, Chaudhry Nisar threatens on the floor of the NA to emulate the ‘model’ of the South Korean and Japanese parliaments (both known for their members’ pugilistic talent). The other major reason for authoritarianism in our country are the all too frequent military coups and other forms of intervention/interference in politics. A polity buffeted repeatedly by military dictatorship and/or dictation must inevitably leave as debris notions of ‘strong man’ solutions to our complex and increasing problems. Hence the tendency to look to the military either when democratically elected civilian governments ‘disappoint’ or rivals of the incumbents seek extra-constitutional ouster of the sitting government (this tendency is the hallmark of the eleven-year democratic interregnum of the 1990s).
These approaches to politics have led to the pendulum swinging between military dictatorship and civilian elected governments for most of our existence as an independent state. The latter governments are still constantly fearful of the threat of a praetorian intervention (whether open or clandestine). What exacerbates these fears are when opposition (political and civil) starts to rise on the basis of the non-performance of the incumbents or their authoritarian behaviour. Perhaps for this very reason, the present ruling dispensation has practiced what it calls its ‘reconciliation’ policy, and its critics dub unprincipled opportunism leavened only by the overriding desire to cling to power.
Whatever democracy’s discontents (and they are mounting), the track record has hopefully established for all time the negative consequences of military interference in matters political, interference that arguably leaves more problems in its aftermath than it set out to resolve. Therefore all of us, as a polity and society, have to learn the lesson that a system of democratic governance can only be constructed if we learn to curb our ‘natural’ instincts and acquire the patience for the rules of the game, rules that require opponents to put up with incumbents who continue to enjoy a majority and wait their turn at the hustings for a fresh appeal to the true sovereign, the people.