LAMENTING the shenanigans of politicians is a favourite
pastime of our chattering classes. The mainstream media and
intelligentsia chime in regularly too, while the ‘respectable’
institutions of the state — the military and judiciary — never tire of
reminding us of their ‘non-political’ credentials.
Those of us who believe that the maligning of politicians and
politics at large is part of the problem rather than a precursor to the
solution have always been in the minority, given the way ‘public
opinion’ is forged in this country.
It is hard to swim against the tide at the best of times, but
arguably the biggest impediment to challenging the anti-politics
attitudes that are commonplace within the urban public sphere is
presented by mainstream politicians themselves.
The ongoing fiasco involving the ruling party and the chief minister in Balochistan is a case in point.
It is hard to convince others, let alone oneself, of the inherent
wisdom of allowing the political process to play out without
interruption in the face of quite ridiculous tugs-of-war such as that
currently unfolding between the Raisanis and the Umranis of the world.
The chattering classes feel vindicated, and diehard democrats sick to the stomach.
Even the Asghar Khan case has proven to be a noose around the neck of
politicians insofar as they have been subject to at least as much
censure as the generals for being so ready and willing to make a mockery
of the electoral process.
It cannot be denied that many of Pakistan’s mainstream politicians
have, at one time or the other, been willing accomplices of the military
establishment.
But to emphasise these failings ad nauseam, I think, actually
deflects from the crux of the matter which is that political parties do
not exercise any autonomy vis-à-vis the kingmakers operating the
permanent state apparatuses.
In other words, ours is a country in which political parties function
not as coherent organisational entities that have any kind of
meaningful institutional history, but simply as agglomerations of
individuals or parochial groupings that seek to secure access to the
state.
Indeed one is hard-pressed to come up with a long list of career
politicians who have been attached to only one political party
throughout the course of their political lives.
Ideologues of religio-political parties are, to an extent, exceptions
to this rule, but they have enjoyed a deep consensual relationship with
the state for so long that they are even more complicit in the
demeaning of politics than the average politician attached to mainstream
parties.
Ethno-nationalist parties also fall into a different category,
because of their relatively confrontational posture towards the state
since the latter’s inception. However, these parties have suffered
significant fragmentation over the past few decades, and, for some
ethno-nationalists if not all, principled ideological positions have
increasingly been sacrificed at the altar of expediency.
The sad state of our political parties has deep historical roots in
the sense that the British Raj institutionalised a mode of politics that
left no space for political organisations with a mind or life of their
own, and in fact criminalised such organizations.
In post-partition Pakistan the state has maintained the same posture,
and, from 1977 onwards, buttressed this ‘colonial’ mode of politics by
co-opting the modernising social forces that may have, under different
circumstances, played a much more progressive historical role.
The question, as ever, is what can now be done to redress the
existing situation. In the first instance, the pressures exerted by
objective processes of change will themselves force some rethinking on
the part of mainstream politicians about their conduct.
It is, for instance, increasingly untenable for any claimant to power
to condone or welcome involvement of the military in the political
realm. Rhetorical flourishes of course should not necessarily be taken
at face value but shifts in political discourse do translate, even if
after some time, to changes in political practice.
Second, and very importantly, mainstream politicians who rely on
their familiarity with a very cynical patronage-dominated culture of
politics must be challenged by those who wish to propagate a politics of
change.
We must, in short, bring ideology back in. Since the end of the Cold
War, even on the left of the political spectrum, ideology has been
viewed in suspicious terms. And while it is imperative to move on from
the dogmas of the 20th-century left politics, we cannot abandon our
commitment to abiding ideas or principles that should inform politics.
Importantly a politics of change, built on the back of a coherent
political party, can only emerge if the political process is allowed to
continue uninterrupted, notwithstanding the antics of mainstream
politicians.
Too many political workers have spent too much of their lifetime
simply struggling for the restoration of the democratic process, and too
little time actually deepening democracy and making it responsive to
the needs of working people.
There are, of course, mainstream political parties such as the PPP
and ANP which pride themselves on being ‘ideological’ entities with a
hard core of committed political workers.
It is true that these parties have retained some of their
‘ideological’ colour over a reasonably long period of time, and also
that their jiyalas continue to proudly wear their party hats and boast
about its sacrifices.
But the reality is that these organic segments of the party have been
largely marginalised by the political contractors in the upper
echelons. This is why there are more than a few jiyalas outside the pale
of the party in its current manifestation; many of these otherwise
diehard workers do not oppose the party in public but do more than
complain about the nature and direction of politics amongst themselves.
What all of these political workers are clear about is that politics,
whether principled or not, is impossible without a political party.
If only our armchair critics could start making basic distinctions
such as those between politicians and political parties, or those
between patronage and ideology, we might actually be able to move beyond
episodes such as those that are currently paralysing what was already a
dysfunctional democratic government in Balochistan.
The German sociologist Max Weber wrote a century ago about ‘politics
as vocation’. He emphasised the fact that modern politics requires
knowledge, commitment and creativity. Even if such characteristics are
in short supply at the present juncture, we must strive to cultivate
them within the polity, lest we end up at a dead (khaki) end, yet again.