After Pakistan’s long-delayed parliamentary election it’s not hard topredict how observers will introduce their reports on the country’s chargedpolitical scene.
Most will likely begin: "Conditions conducive to holding free and fairelections were sharply constrained by government manipulation of politicalprocesses." A long list of government-inflicted wounds will follow: mediarestrictions, subversion of judicial prerogative, arrests of lawyers andpolitical party workers, campaign bias toward favored parties and the violationof fundamental rights protections for voters.
No doubt these reports will also detail a tragically dangerous securityenvironment that now colors all of Pakistan’s politics and certainly theseelections: border conflicts that pit Pakistan’s armed forces, sub-nationalistmilitants, religious extremists and tribal leaders against one another; theever-present specter of global terror; and suicide bombings so frequent that theUS intelligence chief now wonders aloud whether the state can survive. It’shard for the electorate to tell whether these cumulative conditions are thecause or the consequence of a compromised political system. Pakistan’spresident, General Pervez Musharraf, seems to interpret terrorism as acircumstance that justifies the indignities of this election year and thegrudging election as a way to excuse them.
Welcome to Pakistani political roulette, where the stakes are high, expectationsare low, and the whole system is, to say the least, imperfect. The governmentclaims to be able to ensure security; major parties are participating, evenwhile complaining; and observers--some, no doubt, armed with guards and Kevlarvests--are closely watching the game.
Can these polls be serious? The answer is yes, and no, and maybe. Following ayear of political tragedy, the 2008 elections could reinforce the worst habitsof a limping praetorian state, or help turn the political tide towardconstructive civilian rule, or signal the end of an era premised on politicalpatronage that has, in a way, lasted almost six decades.
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Some among Pakistan’s politicians have chosen to boycott these electionsprecisely because the fraught electoral environment reflects all the inequitiesof Musharraf’s brazen manipulations; some will participate simply becausestaying out now means losing a chance to wield power later. And others, tryingto meet the challenges of a fragmented state head on, have decided that only anelection can provide the ballast to dismantle military rule by reinstatingjudges, reducing the power of the army and correcting the entrenched corruptionsof its beneficiaries. Whether the result is good enough for Pakistanis to trusta desperately needed transfer of power remains an open question.
These are burdens that a simple election rarely must shoulder--except inPakistan. Twice before, an elected parliament tried to untangle the excesses ofmilitary rule; twice before, this burden has fallen on the Pakistan People’sParty, which failed by confronting the army. Its successor, the Pakistan MuslimLeague, also failed--first by accommodating the military and then by tryingineffectively to do an end run around it.
The political costs of this election are particularly high--not only becauseparties are weak, but also because dismantling the military-led economy is onlyone piece of a strategic puzzle created by terror from within and from without.Once the self-proclaimed guardians of the state, Pakistan’s army now presidesover a country forced to the edge of war against itself. Everything iscontested: the means and ends of ideology, the limits of Islamism, the rules ofconstitutionalism, the contours of the federation and the meaning of citizenshiphave all been compromised in an environment where the state can easily give theimpression that it fights for its life.
This fundamental political instability is the reason that Pakistan’spoliticians have been flocking to Washington. Some seek protection, other soundalarms. The late Benazir Bhutto, for example, claimed that the PPP’s losswould be proof of pervasive electoral fraud, citing government interference thather party could anticipate but not stop. She might have been right, although herparty has since backed away from such assertions. Others, including Imran Khan,leader of a small, boycotting party, has raised fears that Pakistan couldsplinter after these polls, as Kenya seemed to do when its recent electionsexposed deep ethnic fissures.
Both predictions are probably overstated, but they illuminate a burdened historyand real worries for the security of the state and its citizens. At one and thesame time, they highlight concerns about the legality of the conduct of thiselection, the validity of its outcome and, ultimately, the legitimacy of thepolls themselves.
All are at risk. Although Pakistan’s vulnerabilities are periodicallyexpressed in regional or ethnic terms, these are all symptoms of a problem thatis, at base, deeply political. It’s easy to blame the military forappropriating the state for its own strategic--and occasionallyself-enriching--purposes, but Pakistan’s woes exhibit far more profoundeffects of authoritarianism. The absence of democracy has made it almostimpossible for the legal system to provide a framework for civic participationin political life. It has interrupted economic development, inhibited the riseof a middle class and pitted clans, tribes, provinces, classes and partiesagainst one another. Calculation and tactical action have too often overtakenthe simple notions of the common good and robust civil society--which includessecularists and Islamists, capitalists and socialists, landlords and pettybourgeois. Internal war--even metaphorical fighting--has disrupted a society insharp transition; today, ideologues and militants are gaining the ground oncereserved for tribal chiefs and feudal landlords, and none accurately reflect thecitizenry.
And that brings us to this election. Under civilian and military rulers,Pakistan’s parliaments have been weak links in a tangled institutional chain.Participatory politics doesn’t automatically breed representative government,and surely not in Pakistan--at least, not yet. Were fully open electionsheld--with the free debate that was not possible last year--the result could bea raucous, divided and fascinating legislature. The army and the president, forwhom political uncertainty is an inevitable provocation, would no doubt viewthis parliament as an invitation to instability in conditions of risingmilitancy. And in a different way, it would be a challenge to Pakistan’s oldleaders and habitual politicians, whose comfortable compliance withauthoritarian customs has eroded the institutions they have inhabited fordecades and trumped Pakistan’s sadly erratic democratic aspirations.
This doesn’t mean that these disparate groups are conspiring to defraudPakistan’s voters. But it does mean that it’s worth paying respect toPakistan’s voters by closely examining this election. Late last year, justbefore Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, the Bush administration concluded thata flawed election in Pakistan might be good enough. Pakistani voters, likecandidates who risk their lives to campaign each day, already know just howimperfect the electoral environment has been.
Even if polling day is perfect, Pakistan’s underlying political problemsremain. They won’t be fixed until Pakistan takes a step toward participatorydemocracy--and the international community values Pakistan’s voters enough toexpose electoral weaknesses and point the way toward their correction. Only thencan Pakistan’s voters decide whether to invest this process, incomplete andflawed though it may have been, with legitimacy. The rest of us need to bearwitness to their struggle.
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Paula Newberg has covered Pakistan’s politics for almost three decades andis the author of Judging the State: Courts and Constitutional Politicsin Pakistan. Rights: © 2008 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. YaleGlobalOnline
