In Pakistan, treating democratic oppositions as traitors is the easy way out
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There are many signs of democratic decline in Pakistan but one consistent weakness has been the troubled relations between the majorities forming government and those in opposition. If democracy is practiced in true spirit, opposition parties will have a legitimate place in the system as an alternative, a government-in-waiting. Practically, the parties quite often change places from government to opposition and from opposition to government in mature and institutionalized western democracies. In a competitive system, the political parties take their case to the people for the next electoral run, and depending on who gets the fresh popular mandate, a new government is formed. That’s not the end for the party losing at the polls; it will play its role as an opposition in the legislature and out in the public. In true democracies, the government and opposition are two sides of the same coin and an integral part of the political system. One cannot function without the other.
However, political life in our part of the world doesn’t go by any democratic theory or practices elsewhere. The real challenge in developing democracies, also saddled with the problem of state and nation-building, is keeping a balance between democratic freedoms and social order. In Pakistan, order and stability have taken much greater space than freedom that the ruling groups believe have to be controlled or managed, particularly that of the opposition groups and parties. The history of Pakistan is replete with examples of electoral majorities making it difficult for the opposition parties even to survive, let alone accepting their legitimacy or nationalist credentials. Quite often, political opponents in power or in the opposition are given labels of ‘traitors,’ anti-state and anti-Pakistan. There are three explanations for the opposition-are-traitors phenomena—colonial legacies, history of partition and the feudal culture of the country.
In true democracies, the government and opposition are two sides of the same coin and an integral part of the political system. One cannot function without the other.
Rasul Bakhsh Rais
Pakistan has a complicated political inheritance of British rule, which include state, political institutions, laws and conventions that have continuously impacted developments after independence. British rule didn’t rest on consent but coercion. Stability and longevity of the Empire required submission to alien rule. The colonizers ruthlessly suppressed any sign of resistance by word or deed to make an example out of the ‘traitors.’ Every freedom fighter was a rebel and many laws were written to treat anti-British activities as seditious. Rulers in Pakistan, both military and civilian, have added more to harsh colonial era laws, like Article-6 of the Constitution that is very loosely interpreted to frame opponents in treason cases, for which it is hard to get bail. It is the easy way out for governments to harass the opposition by using ‘treason charges’ instead of engaging in negotiations and building consensus to resolve political disputes.
The Muslim leaders of a very diverse subcontinent were bitterly divided on the idea of Pakistan as an independent country in 1947. Those who opposed it as a way out for Muslim majority areas were demonized as ‘anti-Pakistan’, despite the fact they had accepted it and began participating in the post-independence political process. Then the ruling party, the PML-N overthrew the Congress-led majority government in the then North West Frontier Province, and very harshly treated Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and many others. As most of the dissident political groups happened to be ethnic and regional, demanding greater autonomy in the federation, the so-called nationalist Pakistani groups associated with the state and the state of Pakistan itself attempted to de-legitimize them by calling them traitors.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a democratically elected prime minister, banned the National Awami Party of Baloch and Pashtun nationalists in 1974 and put their entire leadership in jail for years to face ‘treason’ charges. Regimes have changed, but they way political factions sit in to pass judgements on the patriotism of their opponents has yet to change. In the current confrontation, Imran Khan invokes the names of two Muslim Generals who sided with the British in the 19th century against indigenous rulers, for the leaders of the two major parties now in power. Fired by revenge, they keep talking of instituting treason cases against him too.
Loyalty is a great social value in feudal cultures, and it is also one of the enduring legacies of ruling dynasties of the regions that comprise Pakistan. The political party system is generally built on personal elite commitments to a ‘benign’ party head. Sitting on top of the power pyramid, they make deals, manage alliances and reward faithfulness. Defiance or even dissent leads to marginalization. Breaking rank and shifting allegiances makes the dissidents ‘turncoats’ and ‘traitors’-- symbolizing contempt, demonization, and outcasts.
– Rasul Bakhsh Rais is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, LUMS, Lahore. His latest book is “Islam, Ethnicity and Power Politics: Constructing Pakistan’s National Identity” (Oxford University Press, 2017).
Twitter: @RasulRais
