Pakistan Army & art of elections

This is the first time in its history that Pakistan's people have risen to vote against the Army and defeat it. If this isn't a win for democracy, how would you describe it?

Well over a week since the Pakistan election results, we still can’t say who won or lost. Nor can we say who’s going to form the government — the winners, the losers, or a combination of the winner and some or all of the losers. That last scenario seems the likeliest.

As this tamasha plays out, it provides us with a breather to raise a more substantive question: Has democracy won or lost in this election in Pakistan?

Generally, it’s been accepted that each election has strengthened the democratic impulse in Pakistan, barring, of course, the odd “party-less” one (there were a few in the mix, but they were deemed king’s parties) under General Musharraf in 2002.

This is a Pakistani innovation in which dictators stage a facade of elections to give themselves legitimacy and bestow upon themselves the right to claim, “but I am no dictator. See, in my referendum, I just got 98.5 per cent votes”. That was Zia in 1984 with his Islamised referendum.

The next formal dictator after him, Musharraf in 1999, refrained from calling himself chief marshal law administrator, or even President initially. He started out as chief executive.

A hesitation about formal dictatorship had begun to grow among the Pakistani brass. Post-Musharraf, they have evolved an entirely unique doctrine where they can wield power without holding it, never mind who gets elected. The Army was no longer the conductor of an opera but the puppeteer behind the scenes. These hybrid governments were also a unique Pakistani innovation in global politics, until this latest election. Or until the Army blundered in choosing Imran Khan as their favoured puppet in 2018.

That is the reason we ask the question: Irrespective of which party comes to rule Pakistan, has democracy won or lost out in this election? I am giving you both options, with arguments for each.

First, why democracy has won is easier to argue. The Army and the judiciary, unfortunately but characteristically in cahoots with it, disqualified the leading contender and his party from contesting, sent him and his deputies to jail, and froze his symbol. They also brought back their new favourite, Mohammed Nawaz Sharif, who they had rudely and dictatorially removed, jailed and exiled in 2018. Of course, the same judiciary that convicted, jailed and disqualified him from public office has now reversed everything.

Since it is Pakistan, no surprise here. The surprise was delivered by the voters,

who contemptuously tossed the Army/establishment cues to defeat their chosen parties and preferred the “independents” under diverse symbols fielded by Imran from prison.

This is a stunning political and moral defeat for the Army. We now know that the “moral” doesn’t bother the generals and the “political” they can always “fix,” as they’re doing now. None of this, however, changes the fact that this is the first time in its history that Pakistan’s people have risen to vote against their Army. This election saw more than 70 per cent voting against an indifferent 40-42 per cent pattern in the past. All of this is a win for democracy.

Imran was like a favourite son for the Army, who went prodigal on them too soon. He confronted them with a new ideology: Imranism, a destructive mix of conservative Islam, ultra-nationalism, economic populism and an insurgency against the “system”. The Army’s General Headquarters (GHQ) was stumped.

So far, they had dealt with politicians who were rational at least to the extent of understanding self-preservation. Imran, they were not designed to deal with, so they had to squash him. This election shows how spectacularly they failed. If the people of Pakistan rose and thumbed their noses at the Army they revered all these decades, it is a victory for democracy. I’d say that irrespective of how irrational Imran is, how destructive his politics for his nation and how dangerous for his neighbours, especially India, the bottom line remains: He has defeated his Army from a prison cell.

How, then, do we argue to the contrary that democracy is, in fact, the loser in this election? The simple argument that the winning side is kept out, and a coalition of losers will likely be installed, is only part of the story.

The larger point is that the Army is still so powerful that it can override the voter’s will after losing an election.

Usually, it waited a couple of years or three before pulling down an elected government. Now, it hasn’t even waited for the ink on the ballot papers to dry.

It lost the election despite manipulating the playing field, changing the rules, doing to the counting process something that is a hundred times worse than the ball-tampering of the Imran Khan era, and still failed to win. It still doesn’t matter.

If we go with the view that democracy won because the Army got defeated by the voter, how do we reconcile with the hard reality that the government that comes will be even more subservient to it than any in the past?

The turn in Pakistan can easily be compared with that of many Islamic nations in West Asia during the Arab Spring. Many of these states had elections, some for the first time in their modern history, yet each brought to power an ideology and political force that the “system” found acceptable.

These forces were deeply Islamist, populist, anti-Western and conservative. In each case, either the military or a militarised old establishment threw these out and restored dictatorships. Think Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia. Everywhere in this Islamic world the army was seen as a force of modernity and moderation. Pakistan is seeing a replay of this.

The fact is, however reprehensible this subversion of democracy is, it might still serve the interests of Pakistan and its people better. The rest of the world, led by the US — and even China — will be relieved if the Islamist-populists represented by Imran are kept out. And certainly, Pakistan’s neighbours will be relieved. India will be the happiest with a government fronted by the Sharifs and back-stopped by the Army. At least it will be rational and not come wrapped in a suicide vest like Imran Khan’s.

This leaves us with a third question, aside from debating whether democracy won or lost in Pakistan. Is a country ready for democracy just because it can hold elections when its institutions haven’t yet matured and acquired the stature to protect it? Not if all they can do is play their Army’s subaltern and dutifully follow its orders, like the Pakistani judiciary and election commission. A real democracy is founded on institutions, nurtured over long, patient and often painful decades. Until then, whether democracy won or lost in an election will remain an academic question at best.

By special arrangement with ThePrint