2017: Crucial year for Pak’s democracy

Happy New Year, everyone. The world has bid good riddance to 2016 with its political upheavals, civil war, mass displacement and celebrity deaths, and is wondering what 2017 holds (though little suggests the months ahead will be any different). For Pakistan, 2017 is the year in between. We are past the military transition of 2016 — much anticipated, smoothly survived — and we are not yet into election year, which will no doubt bring its own shocks and surprises. A little respite for business as usual. Or is it?

Seen differently, 2017 is a crucial year for Pakistan’s democratic prospects. Nawaz’s third term has been a time of making peace with the new normal, a hybrid form of governance in which the security establishment calls the shots on all that matters while the government backs up its policies with appropriate theatrical flourish in parliament. The hybridity is working — if you define ‘working’ as circumventing a political collapse — with occasional disruptions in the forms of dharnas and media leaks. All sides seem increasingly resigned to the status quo.

But such resignation is unwarranted for the government. The challenges of 2017 will have to be tackled by the civilian administration, solved by diplomacy not might. Indian efforts to isolate Pakistan; an erratic US-administration tilting towards Delhi; shifting post-Aleppo dynamics in West Asia that will require Pakistan to refine its balancing act with Saudi Arabia and Iran; a regionally assertive Russia; an even more regionally assertive China — potentially nothing less than a reordering of the world order. These challenges will require deft politicking to manage relationships while prioritising Pakistan’s interests (for example, no more clumsy brown-nosing that defined the government’s handling of Turkish President Erdogan’s visit).

The challenges on the domestic front are even greater. Phase two counterterrorism initiatives, expanding to include madrasas reform and improved civilian law-enforcement; implementation of CPEC; preparations for the elections, including holding a census and debating electoral reforms; managing the continuing energy crisis; financial planning to juggle mounting debt obligations with the hoped for CPEC windfalls. This is all the stuff of civilian governance.

To manage these challenges Pakistan needs a highly functioning government, comprising both visionary, effective politicians and competent, honest bureaucrats at all levels of civilian administration. More importantly, we need a government that is not perceived as puppet-like or irrelevant, and that is trusted both by the public and the country’s other power centres to shoulder its mounting responsibilities. The stakes are high, and if the government botches it all up, there will be little hope for Pakistan to complete the stop-and-start transition to democracy that it has undergone since independence.

But there is little evidence to suggest that our political class or civilian administration see themselves at a crucial juncture. The government remains bogged down in corruption dramas reminiscent of the 1990s, choosing to finagle out of the mess rather than establish precedents for accountability or transparency. Opposition parties are also weak, embroiled in vanity projects or internal power tussles.

We sought solace in 2016 by celebrating the small victories of the National Assembly and provincial assemblies, which have passed progressive women’s and minorities’ rights legislation. In what other country would the renaming of a physics centre after the country’s first Nobel laureate be perceived as a stride forward for human rights? As welcome as they are, they signal a growing disconnect between the political elite and the public they serve.

This is still a country where Ahmadis are violently persecuted, Mumtaz Qadri’s grave is becoming a shrine, and Masroor Nawaz Jhangvi can win a provincial by-election. The continued reliance on patronage politics and election rigging (in the broadest sense) means that little continuity is required between policymaking and public appeal.

But this is the fastest path to irrelevance if it is not accompanied by holistic and visionary policies aimed at facilitating social change, whether in the form of education and electoral reform, judicial capacity building, improved civilian law enforcement and a revival of grassroots politics that put community outreach at the forefront.

Rather than see 2017 as a breather, our political class and bureaucracy should see it as a crucial year in which to reassert their role and relevance in Pakistan’s political structure.

They should acknowledge this by taking their mandate seriously, reverting to serious political activism and engagement, and introducing major civil service reforms to help prepare Pakistan to tackle an increasingly unfamiliar and unpredictable world. The question is whether they still have it in them to rise to the challenge.

By arrangement with Dawn