Will Pakistan Again Compromise Principle?

To many Pakistanis, national elections, scheduled for next week, represent the triumph of hope over experience. For the fourth time in eight years, the president dissolved Parliament and scheduled elections to replace it. But the Feb. 3 election raises the specter of more hung parliaments and continuing political standoffs between the president and a new prime minister. Pakistanis are again asking: Does voting matter? Can elections bring the democracy they so sorely need?

Citing rampant corruption, manipulation of the judiciary and human-rights violations, President Farooq Leghari dismissed the government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in November 1996. A familiar political script followed: Bhutto, excoriating Leghari, appealed to the Supreme Court to restore her government and coyly suggested that her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) would only endorse an election if the president resigned.

The Muslim League, led by another former (and dismissed) prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, welcomed the chance to regain office. The Jamaat-i-Islami is boycotting elections, hoping to transform its electoral weakness into a popular movement to ensure the accountability of government; and smaller parties, including the new Tehrik-i-Insaf, led by a cricket star, have entered the fray without fundamentally affecting its outcome.

Leghari’s caretaker agenda initially included holding politicians accountable for their alleged misdeeds, but that effort is held hostage by the fragility of the political system. Though the accountability process was to have indicted major political figures for influence-peddling, patronage and the nepotistic distribution of the national exchequer, major figures in Bhutto’s and Sharif’s parties, including the leaders themselves, have been exempted from scrutiny to guarantee their participation in the elections. Rumored bribe-taking by some senior military men also remains outside public scrutiny.

These compromises, as well as the president’s newly formed Council for Defense and National Security that brings the military directly into domestic policymaking, may provide Leghari enough political space to complete his remaining two-year term. But they also lend credence to accusations of backroom bargains that jeopardize the impartiality of the campaign and politicize the president’s purported neutrality.

Compromising on principles has become a basic rule of Pakistan’s political game. With it comes an intolerance that jeopardizes rational political discourse and endangers the electorate. Sectarian violence is on the rise again: Last week, a bomb blast in Lahore killed and injured dozens, including leaders of the militant Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, or SSP, a Sunni party engaged in retributive killings of Shia politicians.

But while successive governments condemn such behavior, each has learned to live with this extremism: Bhutto’s coalition government even included SSP members in its Cabinet. Similarly, thousands of individuals associated with the Urdu-based Mohajir Qaumi Movement remain imprisoned, though their victimization was cited by the president as a cause for dissolving the Bhutto government. Shia and Mohajir candidates remain at risk, electoral freedoms suffer, but no government, including the caretakers, invokes the political will or moral authority to protect rights and end violence.

Nonetheless, Leghari has staked his office on holding elections. His stand is constitutionally proper: When a government is dismissed, elections are required within 90 days. But the depth of the problems outlined in his dissolution order and subsequent speeches, particularly the severely weakened economy, far exceeds the capacity of his interim government to correct.

This dissolution was certainly no revolution: Despite dramatic rhetoric, caretakers have no mandate except to ensure their succession. Leghari has promulgated dozens of ordinances, but all require legislative sanction that a new Parliament may be reluctant to provide. He has personally guaranteed agreements with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, but cannot force Parliament to agree to them without reducing its authority. He can, however, threaten to dissolve any government he disagrees with, rendering Parliament weak, if not irrelevant, to the country’s political future.

This is the confused environment in which the Supreme Court is still hearing a case to restore Bhutto’s government. Reading its tea leaves is tricky: Bhutto could be returned by the court, or returned only to face a no-confidence vote that might lead to renewed elections. Alternately, elections could result in a Sharif victory, but his powers could be then curtailed by presidential prerogative; or a fragmented electorate could vote in an equally fractious parliament that finds coalition-building difficult--again leading to presidential interference.

With uncertain policy compounded by almost inevitable tussles between Leghari and the next prime minister over parliamentary sovereignty, some observers here question whether elections will be held at all. Others describe a victory of form over substance.

Form, however, is important. Elected parliaments, and timely elections, have been integral to Pakistan’s recent experiments with democracy. Though its presidents can dismiss governments, they cannot substitute for parliaments. Indeed, presidential rule has generally meant military rule. But while two long bouts of martial law trained political parties in the fine art of subverting dictatorial tendencies in their leaders, they have not quite educated them in the finer arts of fair and equitable governance.

Pakistan’s politics embraces a paradoxical blend of populism and paternalism that, along with the improprieties of its politicians, has led to the current crisis. Though candidates court votes in election seasons, so far only presidents have exercised the privilege of removing governments, always citing the national interest to justify an end-run around the citizenry. While the significance of a vote is not necessarily diminished by the frequency of its use, it is devalued when it only certifies, and never votes out, sitting parliaments. Repeated dissolutions do a grave disservice to democracy: Voters are pawns in perpetual tussles among battling politicians, rather than the raison d’etre for government.

This is why the choice between accountability and elections is a false one. Accountability does not simply mean punishing those who steal, however important this may be. It means ensuring transparency in governance, across the board, in all aspects of public life. It means creating an environment in which government not only protects the rights of citizens, but also creates conditions for them to protect themselves. Without broad-based accountability, limited investigations into individual wrongdoing offer the appearance of vendetta, which, in turn, debases elections.

Few Pakistanis believe the coming elections will bring concrete change. For voting to be more than an empty exercise, principle will have to be restored to the body politic. Reversing the system of patronage, candidates must once again serve their constituents, so that accountability defines the normal business of politics rather than accompanies its degradation. Only then can an election be a catalyst for change, rather than a way to avoid it.