Addressing the National Assembly on June 12, Mahmood Khan Achakzai, chief of the Pakhtunkhawa Milli Awami Party warned of "[dark] clouds hovering over democracy". Political observers think he was referring military's overthrow of democratic regimes in the past, but didn't refer to the failures of the regimes that prompted military intervention.
This time too, his advice was to immediately form a pro-democracy front to "fight" the perceived danger. What the word "fight" implied, is unclear. Was he asking the democratic regime to deliver, which it almost always failed to do and thus spelled its own doom, or was he actually asking them to...?
But what he did pray God for was to "make our armed forces the best armed in the world!" Impliedly, they aren't the "best" but could become so if they and the government come "on the same page" to save democracy and together convey to the world "that Pakistan is a democratic country and its political and military leaderships are on the same page".
Democracy can't succeed simply via 'unity' among its self-styled defenders; it calls for a visibly enhanced capacity to deliver social and economic benefits that steadily bridge the expanding rich-poor gulf. He didn't mention anything about governance, eg, economic planning by sector experts (not Ahsan Iqbal), and administrative disciplines that eliminate resource waste and corruption.
Achakzai can blame the establishment endlessly for the failures of democracy, but it is undeniable that all democratic regimes were led by majorities of Nawabs, Rajas, Sardars and Zamindars because a two-third of the electorate controlled by them resides in villages and towns, and the bureaucracy there too is controlled by them. That explains why elections were never fair.
This Nawab-Raja-Sardar-Zamindar lot never learnt the art of administering a 'country' with a galore of diversities such as in Pakistan. They still want to administer the state as their mini 'riasts', using democracy to further their interests, not that of the electorate. Over 50 state offices are still headless because Nawaz Sharif hasn't been able to find reliable cronies.
The Achilles' heel of this lot is its being accustomed to cronyism, nepotism, blatant corruption - all eventually leading to failure of democracy, and the calls for military take-over. PML-N spokesmen like Rana Sanullah, Saad Rafiq, Abid Sher Ali, Pervaiz Rashid and others are ensuring that the political divide is escalated to appoint of no return. Should you still blame the Army?
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