Democracy in Pakistan: time to shake up the status quo?
If revolution is a word from the 17th-century, then one of the buzzwords of our age must be disruption: a disorder or a disarrangement, a shakeup or a shakedown, both destructive and creative.
In 2008, former U.S. President Barack Obama was a disruptor. His presidency paved the way for an even bigger disruption in the form of Donald Trump in 2016.
In Pakistan five years ago, Imran Khan and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf were meant to be the disruptors, the break from status-quo parties reeking of 20th-century politics. Except now, the PTI is starting to resemble the parties it opposed — with a lack of intra-party democracy, a patchy record in the province it has governed, and a growing stable of “electables” culled from the so-called status-quo parties. It now also has a better shot at winning the 2018 elections.
Imran Khan’s real disruptive act in the five years since Pakistan’s last election was the Panama case which led to Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification as prime minister, barring him from holding public office for life. For Sharif, what was personal became political.
So followed the last tumultuous year in politics in which the natural order of things appeared to change.
After Sharif was disqualified, he became the new disruptor in town. After all, the status quo isn’t actually helmed by older political parties like the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN) and others, as Khan claims. Political parties rule their small fiefdoms, sometimes using means detrimental to their voters, but the real power is the military establishment, which is more unified, organized, and resourced.
Sharif no longer seems to care that his speeches and interviews may drive away PMLN leaders on the fence and embarrass those loyal to him. After all, they are the ones who will be contesting the elections since he no longer can.
One Karachi politician who recently switched from a more established party to a new political party told me, “Any politician who thinks they don’t need the establishment is lying.”
Sharif claims he is done with the establishment.
In the last elections, Imran Khan and his PTI party were meant to be disruptors that challenge the status quo, but now they are starting to resemble the parties they opposed.
Amber Rahim Shamsi
“These games have gone on too long. Something has to change,” he told the Dawn newspaper.
That interview received a lot of bad press, with Sharif quoted as saying he was at war with “aliens,” and referring to the perils of parallel governments.
The three-time prime minister keeps on throwing down the gauntlet. He has also claimed he is being accused of corruption and “punished” for filing the treason case against former president and army chief Pervez Musharraf.
Will anti-establishment Sharif be able to successfully peddle his new narrative?
Before the Sharif disruption, this election was supposed to be about performance.
In 2013, the two biggest concerns for voters were terrorism and load-shedding. One can quibble over whether Pakistan’s counter-terrorism has been more successful than its counter-extremism, or how frayed transmission and distribution systems cannot bear the load of the surplus electricity or the massive debt the next government will inherit. The truth is that in this election, on the surface at least, consumer spending is up, terrorist attacks are down, and there are fewer power outages than there were five years ago.
In the absence of big and unifying voter concerns, will local issues prevail or will it be broader political narratives? Ideology does not put food on the table, according to conventional political wisdom.
It was Obama who said three years ago, at a ceremony commemorating the civil rights movement: “It’s the idea held by generations of citizens who believed that America is a constant work in progress; who believed that loving this country requires more than singing its praises or avoiding uncomfortable truths. It requires the occasional disruption, the willingness to speak out for what’s right and shake up the status quo.”
As a young democracy, Pakistan too is a work in progress. Perhaps the 2018 elections might provide some answers: will something change, will there be a disruption, or will it all be the same again?
• Amber Rahim Shamsi is an award-winning multi-media journalist. She has worked with the BBC World Service as a bilingual reporter, presenter and producer. She has also written research reports on women in media, as well as conducted journalism workshops for working journalists and students of journalism. Twitter: @AmberRShamsi
