Democracy blues

While democracy in Pakistan confronts serious threats - outcome of its consistent record of corruption, bad governance and administrative failures - the prospects of democracy are becoming bleaker even in the country that has the distinction of having the "mother" of all parliaments - the United Kingdom.
A British expert, currently assisting a team involved in advising the government on clearing the mess in the country's fiscal system, told me that people are losing confidence in democracy as the ideal system of governing the state courtesy the recklessness with which democrats allowed the private sector to virtually rob the people.
According to him, the "Arab Spring" won't remain confined to the Middle East; in the next two years, with the exception of countries like Canada, Malaysia and Singapore, the entire globe will experience an extended "spring"; Libya could have avoided that "spring" had Qadhafi not been overthrown and killed.
The reason therefor is that governments are excessively indebted and there are virtually no signs of how they will generate the capacity for repaying their debt that is rapidly squeezing out the very private sector the corrupt within which led these governments on the road to self-destruction.
It was democracy, not a world war that pushed the global economy into a seemingly bottomless pit. Yet, the democrats are harping on the same note - democracy is the best system of governance - and are keen on completing their term, not about clearing the mess they created - an endeavour that could revive confidence in democracy.
This is exactly what is happening in Pakistan. Least bothered about the mess it has created over the past nearly four years, the sole concern of the coalition is to somehow stay in power for another year. The regime is least concerned about whether it has anymore the credentials to stay in office. Instead of looking inside its shirt, the regime faults everyone pointing to its having lost the credentials to stay in office. The logic of its spokespersons, principally Babar Awan, is that the regime has the right to stay in office because it has been elected by the people; impliedly, how badly it performs during its term is inconsequential.
On January 19, 2010 in a TV talk show Barrister Naeem Bukhari (publicly not a PPP spokesman) had expressed his shock at the prospect of just 17 individuals (a reference to the then full bench of the SC) deciding the fate of an individual elected by 170 million.
Ab initio, this comparison - SC judges vs. ordinary Pakistanis - was devoid of both rationality and decency. Besides, all the 170 million Pakistanis (including more than half below the age of 18) couldn't and didn't vote. And Nadra's latest disclosures about accuracy of the electoral rolls (basis of the 2008 elections) are shocking.
Roughly 78 million were on the electoral rolls, 45 percent of the entries in these rolls were bogus, and just one-third of the voters cast their vote. Impliedly, just about 17 percent of the genuine voters elected the parliament and coalition parties received about 60 percent of the votes cast, ie, about 10 percent of the listed voters.
That confidence in democracy has been going down steadily is proved by the fact that, during the last decade, voter turnout went down almost everywhere. The reason therefor was that beginning 1980, the US and European democracies opted for deregulating their economies that nurtured greed and resultant recessions became more frequent.
Indeed, business and industry must not be regulated to the point where innovation is shunned, but deregulation that helps to enrich the already rich at the expense of the poor is bad, which is what kept happening. Just look at the rise in poverty all around the globe. Is that what democracy delivers?
That this process went on for too long reflects on the conscience of the politicians. Disclosures about 'democratic' politicians' corruption and misdeeds have now become a daily affair; while we in Pakistan have had enough of them, the more 'enlightened' democracies too are no better off.
On December 15, former French president Jacques Chirac was convicted for influence peddling, breach of trust and embezzlement between 1990 and 1995, when he was mayor of the French capital. In their ruling, the judges said Chirac breached the duty of trust - the biggest single obligation of an elected politician.
This is only the latest disclosure. Stories about former Italian prime minister were worse. Politicians' loss of a sense of moral obligation, and partnership in massive crimes, heralded the current recession. But, throughout the decades beginning 1980, politicians kept indulging in both ignoring the fact that they were fuelling poverty.
Should democracy lead to a global "spring" triggered by massive poverty? We will witness such a spring in not too distant future, and democracy would soon have just a handful of buyers. Oddly, the self-styled but equally clueless supporters of democracy don't come up with a solution for this quandary.
Just one indicator of how politicians wrecked democracy in Pakistan is their open disdain for any regulation that requires a parliamentary hopeful to have a professional qualification. How on earth can the unprofessional and inexperienced manage the massive institution called the "state" is a secret only the politicians know about.
Can such a lot ever pull a problematic economy like Pakistan out of the pit? Going by its track record, what is certain is that it can't. What we need is a caretaker regime composed of professionals with a proven track record and with a tenor of at least 90 weeks, not 90 days. Nothing short thereof can put Pakistan back on track.
The past political regimes have wrecked the economy to a point where it must be repaired by a selfless and wholly committed regime with requisite judicial mandate and protection to take drastic actions for rooting out nepotism, corruption, inefficiency and waste at every level of the state.
While it is understandable that the coalition members see a threat to themselves (courtesy their deeds and prolonged apathy) if the regime is ousted, the stand of PML-N on the issue is as self-destructive. It is time politicians and democracy lovers realised that, for the present but hopefully not for long, their time is up. They must head for home, reflect on how self-centred they have been, and beg forgiveness for the harm they have done to the country and the nation all these years. The exercise might just work in turning them into more responsibility conscious citizens for the next round of democracy.