Last month, commenting on Pakistan's decades-long tragedy - its flawed democracy - at the Washington Ideas Forum, General Musharraf (Retd) stirred a fresh wave of criticism by defenders of the 'Pakistani' brand of democracy; such reactions are routine, though the democracy-lovers did precious little to make Pakistan's democracy appear credible.
According to Musharraf, the inherent weakness of Pakistan's democracy is that it hasn't been tailored to undo the flaws in Pakistan's political set-up because "the Constitution doesn't provide those checks and balances." Ironically, what he didn't mention was that, when in power, he too didn't inject any checks and balances into the system. Yet, his observation merits discussion.
Defenders of Pakistan's democracy don't see that it consistently side-lined the principle advocated by Plato in "The Republic" whereby the government must be an aristocracy of the meritorious - the best and wisest in the state - who showed that they could apply their learning to the real world. Defying this principle, we kept elevating the incompetent to our legislature.
To Plato, the ideal government consists of the 'meritorious guardians', neither hereditary nor monarchical. All citizens could become guardians of the state provided they convincingly proved their mastery over theoretical principles and demonstrated practical experience of enhancing public welfare and hold the bureaucracy accountable on fair and accurate bases.
Our politicians rarely reflected this attribute; most of the time they demonstrated the opposite. Ancestry is now a virtual 'pre-condition' for party leadership, and integrity and competence are no longer the pre-requisites for becoming parliamentarians, as proved by post-election cases of forged educational certificates, and track record of indulgence in illegal activities.
Consequently, no democratic regime portrayed, even remotely, what Plato had advocated. It is worth asking the defenders of democracy in what ways did the democratic regimes benefit the ordinary. Isn't it a fact that, from being the second fastest growing economy in Asia after Japan during 1960-65, Pakistan's economy kept sliding, courtesy its democratic regimes?
Media-promoted populism downgraded prudence and rationality as the drivers of improvement in governance. In the name of defending democracy, nepotism, cronyism, incompetence, frauds, and corruption, placed Pakistan's future at stake - conduct unbecoming of the supposedly sincere (in reality, self-serving) elements in the media.
Just two examples of how democratic regimes corrupted the bureaucracy and the administrative system are the Protection of Economic Reforms Act-1992 that legalised flight of capital, and refusal/dilly-dallying by virtually every state institution to hold accountable the entities exposed by Panama Leaks. Should such democracy be defended, or should it be overhauled?
Competency of the PML-N regime is manifested by Pakistan's being over-burdened with debt, and the pathetic state of essential and civic services. On the diplomatic front, instead of being seen as the country bleeding from India-backed terrorism, Pakistan confronts the risk of isolation globally due to Indian propaganda about Pakistan being the promoter of terrorism.
While some in the media find nothing wrong in principle with PTI's aspirations to overhaul the system, they insist that exclusive obsession with system-overhaul at the cost of all the other afflictions bedevilling the state and society erodes PTI's credibility. The fact is that every affliction that bedevils the state and the society is rooted in cronyism and corruption.
Corrupting the bureaucracy achieved two self-serving aims of the politicians: kept two-thirds of the population (the electorate) illiterate, impoverished, and thus in the clutches of the landlords for the landlords to win parliamentary elections, and parliamentarians' near-zero accountability allowed transferring abroad state revenue worth trillions of rupees.
Pursuit of goals that serve national interests became a joke. Dishonesty and greed became the preferred values of the elite. In 1987, Allan Bloom authored a book (The closing of the American mind) wherein he asked a critically important question: "When there are no shared goals or vision of public good, is a social contract possible," and lamented the corruption of future generations' mindset.
Supporting Plato's point of view, Bloom asked "if we are to become truly human we shouldn't be content only with the values our culture provides; such existence is a closed cave - a prison sealed by a blinkered self-righteous attitude". The deadliest of these values places self-benefit above all considerations, which it amounts to saying "everyone for himself, God for us all".
Such a mindset fuels economic disparities - the harsh reality of Pakistan depicted by its rising poverty line. Yet, instead of accepting its governance failures, regime after regime shamelessly denied them, or cited bigger failures of the previous regimes as the consoling factor, though it implied being incompetent and corrupt like the previous regimes.
Not surprisingly, to sustain this profile of mal-administration, poll rigging became an accepted reality because committers of this heinous crime were rarely punished. Most political observers (except the lovers of such a flawed democracy) agree that, except for the 1970 elections (that led to the break-up of Pakistan), all others were rigged.
After the 2013 elections, Federal Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar admitted before the National Assembly that authenticity of 60,000 to 70,000 votes cast in any constituency couldn't be verified due to non-availability of electronic thumb impression verification technology. According to him, poll-rigging was a reality, and should be accepted ungrudgingly.
The Judicial Commission formed after the prolonged 2014 sit-in by PTI too concluded that while rigging did take place, it wasn't an "organized" effort; therefore PTI's demand for declaring the elections invalid wasn't actionable. On the petitions filed for investigating Panama Leaks too, the Supreme Court's Registrar responded by classifying these petitions as 'frivolous'.
The almost daily exposure of corruption in state offices, visible failures on the diplomatic front, and the Prime Minister's avoidance of his accountability over the Panama Leaks together imply that changing this set-up for installing real democracy isn't possible without first freezing it and then installing a civilian technocrat caretaker regime that mandates honesty and responsibility as the pillars of policy-making and implementation.
Now the PML-N regime is backed by PPP, ANP, JUI-F and PkMAP (you know why) in blocking this change via a peaceful process, which may trigger a bloody conflict (as forecast by the National Assembly Speaker in a seemingly politicised media-talk), although that is the most destructive route to heralding change. But letting corruption flourish at the cost of the nation and the country to sustain a disguised profile of monarchy that is touted as democracy, would be suicidal.
This dangerous build-up, reflecting politicians' gross irresponsibility, is greatly worrying for the masses already crushed by problems of every variety relief wherefrom can be ensured only by radically improved governance. Yet, political parties' priority remains protecting a monarchical and unaccountable profile of democracy. Is this what the nation deserves?