ANALYSIS: Anarchy and democracy —Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi

[fatman17]

ANALYSIS: Anarchy and democracy —Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi

The tendencies of defiance and anarchy can be discouraged if the PPP-led government pays serious attention to improving governance and bridging the gap between the policy pronouncements of its leaders and performance of the government

Violent protests against electricity outages and hikes in petrol and diesel prices last week raised a host of issues, especially about these protests’ implications for civic order and the future of democracy in Pakistan. Was the defiant and anarchic behaviour of the protesters aimed only at registering protest or did it have a wider political agenda of targeting the federal government? This may be the emergence of a new type of violent popular disposition and political culture that threatens democracy.

The protests took place in the major cities of all provinces, although their intensity varied. Invariably the offices of WAPDA or power generation companies, state property and banks were ransacked by the rioting crowd. There were clashes with the police in some places, including Karachi and Hyderabad.

The protests were more widespread and violent in Punjab. Even district and sub-district level areas experienced violence. Electricity-related offices and public property was ransacked in most places. The protesters paralysed normal functioning of business and commercial activities and ordinary people found it difficult to undertake their routine affairs. In some places, the police had to resort to baton charge and tear gas to disperse the rioting crowd. Regular traffic was disrupted by protesters in almost all cities. Some of them went to the extent of stopping railway trains, and, in Jhang, some coaches of a railway train were set on fire.

The pro-PMLN businessmen and traders in Lahore were very active in forcing the suspension of business and commercial activity. Some of them demanded that the federal government resign on account of electricity outages.

Street protest is a legitimate right of the people as the last resort. However, this does not give them right to ransack public and private property and terrorise people. It has been noticed for the last four to five years that protesters appear more interested in making life difficult for others, disrupting normal business and routine city life, causing traffic jams and ransacking property rather than in mobilising support for their demands. Their underlying consideration appears to be that one can draw attention by demonstrating the capacity to disrupt normal life in a city or town. This also demonstrates poor understanding of their responsibilities as citizens.

It is generally observed that aggrieved people have a tendency to walk out of their workplaces or institutions and block nearby roads by erecting roadblocks or setting fire to tyres or other material in the middle of the road. Sometimes, a small group of young people suddenly appears on the road, sets up barricades, lights fires in a commando-like operation and disappears quickly. At times such people also engage in violence and ransack business and commercial centres, official property and especially banks.

In February 2006, a large number of young people protesting in Lahore against the publication of “cartoons” in a European country turned violent without any provocation and engaged in unprecedented arson and looting. The religious parties that had sponsored the rally refused to take responsibility for what happened, declaring that their workers were not involved.

Disruption of traffic has become an established method of protest. The first thing students do to protest is to come out of their institutions and block traffic. In the case of the latest protest against electricity outages, protesters created an anarchic situation in some cities. They also stopped railway trains. In a separate development, when railway workers protested in favour of their demands in Lahore, they attempted to disrupt railway traffic.

It is a dangerous trend; more and more people are resorting to the disruption of civic life and causing inconvenience to ordinary people as a protest strategy. Now, there are more instances of interference with railway traffic. This has negative implications for the current efforts to revive and institutionalise democracy. The success of democracy depends on developing a moderate and tolerant disposition towards socio-political and economic issues, which need to be addressed through the democratic institutions and processes.

The prospects for democracy cannot improve if issues are to be settled in the street, and protest is not viewed as effective unless it becomes violent or disrupts normal functions of society. If democracy is to be stabilised and the prospects for non-democratic and unconstitutional changes are to be minimised, political leaders should work towards problem solving through democratic institutions and processes as set out in the constitution and law.

The opposition, especially the PMLN, may be getting grudging satisfaction from the current protest because it discredits the PPP-led coalition government. They may think that the unpopularity of the current government improves their prospects in the next general elections.

While there may be some electoral gains for the PMLN due to mismanagement of the electricity shortage by the government, this does not necessarily mean that the protests are PPP-centric, and that if the PMLN comes to power it will not face a similar challenge in the streets.

Political leaders should worry about the rise of a culture of defiance and anarchy in Pakistan. If politically active circles imbibe these political orientations, they tend to use them as a routine strategy to pursue their agenda. If the operating political norms are defiance, street agitation, disruption of civic life and economic activity, there is little hope for democracy.

Political leaders should not encourage defiance among people as was done by Nawaz Sharif after the Supreme Court disqualified him from contesting elections in February 2009. His public addresses in the immediate aftermath of this development called upon the police and civil servants to defy the government. If a politician encourages people to defy his political adversaries, what is the guarantee that these methods will not be used against him? If sections of the population imbibe violent protest and anarchic methods as normal instruments for advancing political agendas, they will use them against any government if and when needed.

The tendencies of defiance and anarchy can be discouraged if the PPP-led government pays serious attention to improving governance and bridging the gap between the policy pronouncements of its leaders and performance of the government. It needs to rectify the perception that electricity outages are partly caused by negligence and non-payment of dues to private power producers. The other perception is that the presidency is pursing state affairs in a personalised manner and assigns premium to loyalty over professionalism and judicious management.

No matter if the judiciary is supportive of democracy and the military wants to limit itself to its professional role, civilian democratic institutions can still run into serious problems if the political leaders do not pursue their divergent agendas with moderation and within constitutional limits in letter and spirit. Societal groups need to subscribe to democratic and constitutional norms for pursuing their demands. If they repeatedly resort to violent methods and create anarchy either on the encouragement of some political leaders or on their own, democracy will never stabilise.

Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi is a political and defence analyst

 

[Ratus Ratus]

Was that a polite way of saying that politicians, political parties and religious groups need to grow up and act in a mature manner.

The constant use of some form of demonstration to publicly object to an issue leads to this being the norm of doing things. The start of possible so called Mob Rule. Protest, destroy and disrupt but actually gain little in the long run.

 

[muse]

Political leaders should worry about the rise of a culture of defiance and anarchy in Pakistan. If politically active circles imbibe these political orientations, they tend to use them as a routine strategy to pursue their agenda. If the operating political norms are defiance, street agitation, disruption of civic life and economic activity, there is little hope for democracy.

The author begins with a flawed A priori proposition, namely that "Democracy" by which he means "Westminster" is the only way to organize governance --- "Democracy" has but one redeeming quality, a bloodless transfer of power - I would suggest that this qulaity does not justify the kind of religious faith the proponents of Pakistani style "Democracy" deposit in it.

More than anything else Pakistani governance needs RULES. unfortunately, no person or institution in Pakistan is able to deliver on that.

 

[muse]

Pakistanis remain disappointed with the quality of governance they experience - Why? What continues to be the missing ingredient??


Our weakest link

Legal eye

Saturday, August 01, 2009
Babar Sattar

The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.

While we continue to vie for representative democratic governance, the institution meant to be the repository and emblem of democracy is turning out to be our weakest link. In most functional democracies a new parliament discharges the maximum onus of planned legislation in its initial years when the legislators are still energized and their priorities are not excessively warped due to factionalism and considerations of re-election. But well into the second year of its existence our parliament has nothing to show for itself. Even more pitiable is the fact that in their individual capacities our parliamentarians readily lament the dismal performance of the parliament and champion the need to make it sovereign and functional; but all without the slightest inkling that it is their personal acts and omission that are the object of censure.

Our constitution prescribes trichotomy of powers, with the executive, the judiciary and the legislature as equal pillars of the state. But for all of our history – be it during prolonged spells of praetorian rule or intermittent phases of civilian autocracy – we have unfortunately only had a bloated executive encroaching over the province of the legislature and the judicature. We lay most of the blame for our deformed institutional development on the shoulders of our 'khaki saviors'. But is such usurpation of power by khaki or non-khaki executive possible without simultaneous abdication of authority by other institutions. Our judiciary has habitually acted as an appendage of the executive and willingly exhausted its moral and legal authority in failed attempts to legitimize repeated military rule. The events of 2007 fortunately shook the judiciary out of its deep slumber, burdened the conscience of independent-minded judges and we now have a reconstituted court that seems eager to assume responsibility and discharge its constitutional obligations.

But has our parliament not learnt any lessons? Is there no realization within the legislative chambers that status quo is no longer an option and if no sensible distinction can be drawn between today's parliament and Ziaul Haq's Majlis-e-Shoora even well-meaning people might wonder about the need and viability of our model of democracy? Why do members of parliament seem completely oblivious to their job description as lawmakers? If our MNAs and senators continue to view their hallowed institution merely as recruitment centre for the executive or for seeking ready access to means of state patronage to be used in carrying our municipal functions within their constituencies, who will legislate for the country? How farcical that in the absence of any sense of purpose and having smugly outsourced their legislative function to the executive, our parliamentarians continue making sloppy speeches in their lacklustre debating club highlighting the virtues of parliamentary sovereignty.

What will it take to wake up our parliamentarians to the fact that our fundamental law is currently bedevilled by contradictions our legislative branch must fix? There has been complete consensus in Pakistan that General Musharraf's actions of Nov 3, 2007, were unconstitutional. The only disagreement between minority opinion held by Musharraf-loyalists and the rest of the country was over the legal mechanism to be pursued in undoing such actions. Malik Qayyum & Co. preferred a constitutional amendment to rid the Constitution of the edicts of a dictator and the majority legal opinion favoured simple executive action rooted in the assumption that the acts of Nov 3, 2007, were void ab initio and needed no affirmative act to be undone. The latter approach triumphed with the restoration of the judiciary through an executive order. The paradox however is that the PPP-led government continues to run the country on the assumption that the laws protected under the Article 270-AAA of the Constitution are valid pieces of legislation and the parliament seem to have acquiesced in such view.

On being elected to office, our parliamentarians swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. One would have imagined that their first order of business would have been to address the illegality of Nov 3, affirm the content of the Constitution, validate any laws that were useful and needed to be legitimately enacted, and then move on to amend the Constitution to rid it of such parts of the 17th amendment that are undesirable. We did get mired in PPP's flip-flops on the restoration issue. But now that we have moved on it is inexplicable why our parliament is still loath to address Nov 3? Why is it abdicating its responsibility and hoping that the Supreme Court will devise an all-encompassing miracle solution? After all there are serious limitations to what the judicature can do: it can invalidate law contrary to the Constitution, it can interpret law, but it cannot promulgate law.

Islamabad High Court, for example, was created under post-Nov 3 Constitutional amendments. Though illegitimately conceived, this is an extremely useful judicial forum that needs to be retained. Its composition should to be rethought to make it representative of all federating units. But staffed by able judges, it offers the promise of evolving expert jurisprudence in administrative law and regulatory matters, which is desirable. But it is not within the power of the Supreme Court to declare the Islamabad High Court kosher. Further, while the Supreme Court can strike down the laws protected under Article 270-AAA, while granting partial or complete amnesty to rights that might already have accrued under such laws, or allow the parliament time to validly promulgate laws it deems desirable, the court cannot pick and choose laws and executive actions on the basis of their desirability.

The apex court has no constitutional mandate to make such choices of policy, for it can only determine the legality of laws and actions based on the provisions of the Constitution and principles enshrined in our laws. It is parliament that has the mandate to amend the Constitution to legitimize the Islamabad High Court. Similarly it is an abdication of responsibility by parliament to force the Supreme Court to preserve desirable laws bunched under Article 270-AAA through contrived legal fiction rather than subjecting each piece of legislation to an up or down vote. The Supreme Court has also rightly pointed out that it falls within the competence of the parliament to provide for punishment of persons guilty of high treason under Article 6 of the Constitution. The Supreme Court can require the executive to ensure that legal mechanisms for prosecution of individuals for violation of Article 6 of the Constitution are not disabled. But it cannot make the decision of whether or not an individual is to be prosecuted for alleged violations that is reached in exercise of discretion that is vested in the executive under the law and Constitution.

The refusal to take responsibility and exercise authority cannot be attributed to nonchalance alone and is the manifestation of a larger malice: our continuing proclivity to find virtue in the logic of expediency. It is wise to let bygones be bygones we are told and move on without ruffling any feathers. But what of the feathers that need pruning? "When you belong to the community that you are trying to lead, you are part if the problem. This is particularly true when you have been a member of the group for sometime," write Harvard professors Heifetz and Linsky in Leadership on the Line. This is the problem with the generation currently at the helm in Pakistan that grew up in an independent country without having any role in its creation, has only run the country down over the last two and a half decades, has had its consciousness nurtured by the doctrine of convenience and has an abiding faith in the ability of our nation to continue to bear the burden of a depraved amoral political and social ethic.

It is this mindset that needs to change. Equivocation and sitting on the fence is what has contributed to our sorry state. We need to be wise in crafting policies but must shun expediency when it comes to upholding principles. There is overwhelming consensus in Pakistan that we need to change the way we do business in this country and no progressive change can be built over compromised principles. Let our parliamentarians and political parties take public positions on issues such as Nov 3, prosecution of Musharraf and the NRO, instead of using the judicial process to undo the nefarious effects of vile political compromises made in chambers of power.

Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu

 

[fatman17]

Let our parliamentarians and political parties take public positions on issues such as Nov 3, prosecution of Musharraf and the NRO, instead of using the judicial process to undo the nefarious effects of vile political compromises made in chambers of power.

which the judiciary has convieniently "avoided" knowing too well that the parlimentarians will not "act" on this issue as it can be "curtains" for them!

on the prosecution of musharraf for "treason" would be considered by the army as "stepping on their toes", so dont see much headway in this direction also.

so the status quo remains as the country plunges into "mob rule" mentality!