Prof.Ziaullah Khan

Monday, 9 May 2016

Naveed-e-Zia

Mr. Khursheed Nadeem,
Columnist, Daily Dunya,
Lahore.
Subject: “Elections do not a Democracy Make”
Dear Khursheed Nadeem,
I appreciate your intellectual contributions being made through your columns in daily Dunya. I am highly convinced with your general observation that many people in Pakistan don not feel and react rationally. It seems most people in our country are living and behaving in feuds and tribes. Nevertheless, I would like to differ with your finding that Imran Khan is an agitator and a threat to the stability and democracy of Pakistan.
Sir, many intellectuals and political thinkers in comparative politics have concluded that democracy has three distinct states of being: formal, in actual practice and informal. Nations that claim the mantle of democracy typically mix features of all three varieties.
Formal democracy is the machinery of legislation and election. Actual practice is how the machinery functions in the real world. Informal democracy is advocacy via direct action – protest, local movements and spontaneous mass expressions of outrage/disavowal of the status quo. According to Levitsky and Way, Pakistan is not a liberal democracy but a competitive authoritarian state. If we want to progress towards a true democracy, we need to appreciate and encourage all those political and social movements which move our country towards real democratic direction. When we discard Imran Khan and others’ endeavors that break the shackles of status quo in Pakistan, we practically discard democracy in its actual practice and in its informal dimension. Moreover, to Morkel, a constitutional democracy consists of five components; electoral regime, political liberties, civil rights, horizontal accountability and effective power to govern. To my understanding, you consider a regime democratic when it is simply democratically elected whether the fairness and transparency of that election is in question or not. Similarly, you strongly support the effective right of our elected representatives to govern without demanding their effective and real horizontal or vertical accountability. To me, elections and unaccountable regime does not make a democracy. The hollow shell of democracy and unaccountable void of the regime will have to be filled by some unseen powers. It is correct that true democracy takes roots through an evolutionary process. Should we wait for Allah to take care of the poor masses unless that evolution takes place and keep on allowing the plunderers to loot public money without any real check? I hope you would revise some of your views on the actual democratic discourse in Pakistan and would not bracket others in strangers’ tribe. There are people like me who do not believe in the odd stability that brings prosperity to super rich elite and their parasites. There is no peace without justice. Similarly, there is no democracy without fairness, transparency and accountability. If people are not allowed to raise their voices through formal and informal means, it’s better to adopt Chinese model of governance and stop talking about democracy and democratic rights. I hope you would not bracket me in your political enemies’ club.
Regards
Professor Ziaullah Khan,
Kalabagh (Mianwali)