Why democracy still in doldrums?

Yes, why? Why Pakistan is hurtled from one crisis to another? Why democracy is still in doldrums, despite its long journey, albeit erratic at times, since the eventful February 2008 elections? Why, why and why?
These explosive questions dominate the political horizon today even as the nation celebrates its 69th birthday. Without detailing the peripheral causes and the march of events and developments that are within the ken of common knowledge, this article will seek to concentrate on the fundamentals that have severely precluded democracy from putting down roots firmly on the Pakistani soil.
First comes the ambivalent role of the political parties. Instead of working for national goals and promoting national interest, almost all the major and minor parties have been engrossed in advancing party goals and interests and in scoring points against rival parties to gain power, in fact absolute power. Sharing power with others is an anathema which they shun at all costs, even against the riding over dictates of national interest. The parties are exclusive, not inclusive, in their structure, approach, politics and policies. The gamut of their activities is not centred around their respective parties as a crystalline institution but around their respective supremos who have been over the years elevated to a "Personality Cult" status.
What, however, has helped the cultivation of personality cults is the traditional Muslim quest for saviours. Saviours do appear at times, of course, but not all the time. Time and again, the gullible Muslims have been duped by fakes with feet of clay. Muslim India had produced two real saviours, one in the nineteenth century and the other in the twentieth - Sir Syed Ahmad, the renaissance reformer who dexterously put the trodden down backward Muslims on the royal road to recovery and identity, and Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah who helped to crystallise Muslim identity and convert their "No Man's Land" into a national homeland in Pakistan. And except for Kemal Ata Turk, the heroic Turkish saviour, the Muslim world was utterly barren for the past six decades. Yet in the innermost recesses of their mindset, Muslims still desperately yearn for the appearance of a messiah, a mahdi.
In any case, the cultivation of personality cults in various parties has seriously undermined democracy and democratic mechanisms at the party level. Except for the Jamaat-i-Islami routinely and Imran Khan's Pakistan Tahreek-i-Insaf during 2011-2012, no party has held party election systematically. Persons to high offices in the party are usually filled in by nominations by their respective supremos instead of being filled in by elections from below. The supremos are really supreme and beyond questioning, curbing and curtailing free and frank discussions and airing of divergent opinions at various party meetings. As a result, the political parties could not develop as an institution per se. That's why the various party members at the TV "talk shows" repeat ad nauseam parrot like what their respective party chiefs say, whether they are Imran, Nawaz, or Asif Zardari. Despite being the Quaid-i-Azam, Jinnah had refused life presidentship and offered himself for election annually. That's how he was able to institutionalise the All India Muslim League.
In any case, institutions are more important than personalities. Stability stems from institutions, not personalities. Italy has had some fifty governments since World War Two, but has never been devoid of political stability. This chiefly because of its entrenched institutions so is the case with several newly liberated European states. So long as we fail to institutionize the components of a democratic system, political stability will continue to elude us.
Talking of a democratic system, it is incomplete in Pakistan. Local Bodies constitute the base of a democratic hierarchy, and its basic tier throughout the world. Somehow or other, the civilian regimes since 1971, whether ZA Bhutto, Benazir - Nawaz duo, Zardari - Gilani government and PML(N) government have always been averse or allergic to local bodies, if only to share power with local satraps. But without local bodies, local participation in governance cannot be ensured nor development brought to the hearts and homes in the cities, towns and villages, nor problems and needs particular to them attended to. Without active local participation and development they turn into ghost and ghastly towns and villages. This is what most places in Sindh, including vibrant Karachi and burgeoning Hyderabad, have turned into since 2010 when the Local Bodies Act/Ordinance sponsored by General Musharraf expired. The autocratic Punjab and Sindh CMs still sit non-plussed and are still reluctant to sharing power at the local level. Till this hostile posture is radically changed, the democratic order will continue to remain incomplete and in utter disarray.
As noted earlier, there is a host of peripheral causes for the ongoing political instability but those pin-pointed above constitute the most fundamental.
(The writer is an HEC Distinguished National Professor and has recently credited Unesco's History of Humanity, vol. VI, and The Jinnah Anthology.)
Sharing power with others is an anathema which they shun at all costs, even against the riding over dictates of national interest. The parties are exclusive, not inclusive, in their structure, approach, politics and policies. The gamut of their activities is not centred around their respective parties as a crystalline institution but around their respective supremos who have been over the years elevated to a "Personality Cult" status.
This is what most places in Sindh, including vibrant Karachi and burgeoning Hyderabad, have turned into since 2010 when the Local Bodies Act/Ordinance sponsored by General Musharraf expired. The autocratic Punjab and Sindh CMs still sit non-plussed and are still reluctant to sharing power at the local level. Till this hostile posture is radically changed, the democratic order will continue to remain incomplete and in utter disarray.