The pet line of democracy lovers is that even the worst of it is better than any other governance system. In reality though, all governance systems are flawed; democracy is only the least flawed of them. But the way the 'exemplary' democracies performed in both war and peace in recent years, has blurred this view.
Errors, like straw, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls must dive below.
- John Dryden, 1631-1700
Over a decade ago at a conference in Warsaw, the then French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said that "the bottom line is that Western countries think a little too much that democracy is a 'religion' and all you have to do is to convert [people]." Short-sighted politicians couldn't visualise the tragedy he was predicting.
Madeleine Albright, then US Secretary of State, responded harshly saying "to those who say that much of the world is not ready for democracy, we say that none of the world was ever truly ready for anything else.... this conference is not for the French, it is for people struggling for democracy." Tragically, the current public opinion, even in the US, reflects a radically different perception.
A Pew Research survey in April found 56 per cent Americans "frustrated", 21 per cent "angry" and only 22 per cent believing that Washington did the "right" things most of the time. According to a 1958 Pew survey, 73 per cent Americans trusted the government, but by 1994 only 17 per cent did so, suggesting that the confidence slide didn't reverse.
Western democracy has traditionally been pro-free enterprise. No one should object to freedom as long as it prods markets into becoming more efficient in meeting their obligations to all stakeholders. But that's not how these markets behave; Lawrence Summers, former US Treasury Secretary and a Harvard professor, thinks differently.
According to him "the right metaphors for the economy are more Darwinian, with the fittest surviving, the winner frequently taking all, and as modern Darwinians have come to understand, accidents of history cast long consequential shadows". These 'accidents' (all rooted in greed) wherein businesses periodically wreck their economies, are accepted as inevitable; tax-funded business bailouts are democracy's new remedial strategy.
If governments accept as normal the greed-triggered financial disasters that plunge taxpayers in miseries like the ones being faced by the Greeks and the Pakistanis, then it is time to ask "what does democracy deliver?" With this profile, democracy would be hard to sell as the population on this planet grows and the continued unfair sharing of resources multiplies people's miseries.
No democratic regime in Pakistan built an enviable record. Their patent excuse was that they weren't "allowed" to graduate to a level of competence in governance - an unconvincing argument because, right from 1947, politicians should have known that with what Pakistan inherited at birth, it couldn't afford a long learning period for its politicians.
Did dropping the graduation condition for parliamentarians help that learning process? Can good governance be assured by discarding the essential credentials for elevation of an individual to the status of 'legislator'? Does the primary responsibility for assessing a prospective parliamentarian's credentials lie with the nominating political party, or with the Returning Officer of the Election Commission?
Democracy's defenders fault the intermittent military take-overs but, in reality, economic mismanagement, the resultant social chaos, and the blatant denial of both to hold onto power, led to the fall of all democratic regimes because this conduct lent credibility to the claims of their destroyers. What politicians refused to learn was that, for democracy to survive in developing countries, above all, politicians needed to be good economic managers.
Nationalising businesses (including even cotton ginning and ghee producing units) wasn't a rational initiative, nor was the induction of the private sector into essential services (eg power-generation) that must be managed by the state to assure lower prices, based on economic returns, not the owners' greed for profit. Both these disasters were the gifts of democratic regimes.
The present democratic regime's plan to privatise state-owned entities (eg oil and gas exploration, ports, railways, postal service, Utility Stores Corp, etc) doesn't reflect economic sense in an economy that must minimise the cost of living and doing business to contain poverty, and to have robust market access for undoing the designs of the mafias that distort markets at the violence-prone retail level.
The logic for privatising key state-owned entities is plugging the fiscal deficit. Even if these crucial assets are privatised, worse still, without purpose-oriented rehabilitation, and the deficit plugged for a year, what next? The remedy lies in adopting professionalism, efficiency, accountability and austerity as the state culture, to eliminate waste and corruption in the system, not in selling the family silver without restoring its glamour.
Adopting 'austerity' and stiff accountability isn't a priority despite the shocking irregularities exposed by the Auditor General in just the FY09 accounts of the federal ministries and offices. Based on more recent disclosures, FY10 would be worse. That massive irregularities go unnoticed, shows not just incompetence but a determined refusal to check and eliminate corruption and waste.
This profile of governance is rapidly undermining the regime's credibility. According to a report on the sitting parliament's achievements, quorum in 90 percent of its sessions was 20 percent or less although the minimum required is 25 percent; this reflects parliamentarians' sense of moral and national responsibility.
The revenue waste is now to be made up by the people via VAT, including at the retail level, while 'experts' favour lower corporate taxes but screening Afghan Transit Trade or taxing agriculture, real estate and capital gains isn't on the cards. Should all this go on? Should the PML-N be as 'friendly' as it is? Aren't the masses, whose acclaimed backing makes the parliament 'supreme', already revolting against the incumbent regime?
We could end up with what Benjamin Disreali's advisors warned him about: two nations, of the 'privileged' and the 'people'. Although people still believe in democracy as the least bad system of governance, shouldn't it become more equitable, need-conscious and responsible? Can democracy survive without acquiring this profile, and can the regime in power ensure this?
Democracy can't be shielded merely by 'supremacy' of the parliament; we need to look deeper instead of relying on the make-believe love for democracy. European Central Bank President is damn right when he says "there is need for a quantum leap in governance" of the state; it applies to all present-day democracies.
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