Is freedom divisible? Is it possible to describe a polity as being democratic when large areas of state and society are subject to authoritarian dispensations, while the remainder are threatened by the increasing momentum of a juggernaut of autocracy? The struggle between dictatorship and democracy in Pakistan cannot be said to have ceased with the transition to the outer accoutrements of a parliamentary democracy a decade ago. Because there is no more insidious or reprehensible a regime than one which wraps its authoritarian bent in democratic robes, the democratic forces in Pakistan are faced with a new and difficult journey.

Legitimacy is a category which has to be acquired by reference to certain generally accepted norms of a representative order. However, it is not something which once bestowed cannot be taken away. The initial act of anointing a contender with incumbency is no guarantee by itself that the courses of love will henceforth run smooth. Divorce is as much part of democratic politics as it is conjugal existence. In the case of politics however, the divorce between the people and an incumbent government can sometimes end up far messier than any marital breakdown. Many factors can feed into the disillusionment which is usually the precursor of a final rupture of the by then tenuous links between the electorate and the elected. But it is usually safe to say that it is performance in office which determines the final denouncement.

On this touchstone, how does the present government fare? The heavy mandate has not translated into rendering the Pakistani state more secure (nuclear blasts notwithstanding), state institutions being further consolidated within their respective spheres, the economy made more robust or society better managed. In fact, in many respects, the opposite is true. Can this failure (or series of failures) simply be ascribed to the level of competence of the government of the day? Or is it that the general crisis which has Pakistani state and society in its unrelenting grip is so severe that ordinary competence simply cannot match up to the needs of this historic moment. Especially if the incumbents, like every other mainstream political force, are not entirely free of vested interests of their own.

The results of the February 1997 elections, and the heavy-handed, one-sided, partisan accountability process in their wake, meant that for a long time to come, the political opposition would be hamstrung both within and without parliament (that may well have been the conscious purpose). That left few institutions as potential checks on authoritarian tendencies. One such check on authoritarian tendencies. One such check on a democratically elected government impatient with constraints was a presidency empowered under General Ziaul Haq's eighth amendment construct to dismiss the government of the day within judicially determined parameters. That patently authoritarian shackle was removed through the 13th constitutional amendment, which restored the power of the elected chief executive with only the condition of a parliamentary majority to ensure constitution in office.

That brought the check provided by parliament into focus. However, in the given arithmetic of the 1997 national assembly, in which the opposition was reduced to a mere rump, this could only be effective if there was room for voices of conscience to be heard from within the bulging ranks of the treasury itself. That, however, was not to be. The 14th constitutional amendment saw to that. In the ostensible name of uprooting horse trading, the collective lips of all members of parliament were sealed, the opposition for its own opportunistic reasons acquiescing actively in this murder of free speech, expression, and conscience, carried out in the full light of day. This has permitted the executive ever since to ignore parliament in all but the most dire necessity for a demonstration of the heavy mandate on the floor of the national assembly. The coterie has replaced even the collective responsibility of the cabinet, another institutional arrangement of which the present government seems less than enamoured. Decision making therefore, is the stuff of whim and narrow perception, without the benefit of diversity of views and broad debate, considered the sinews of any democratic order.

The judiciary's ability to restrain the executive from acts of an arbitrary or patently illegal or unconstitutional nature was weakened by the tussle which saw a perfectly sound case against the ruling party ruined by the adventurism of an unwise chief justice. The residual power in this respect appears under strain, except where the collective weight of opinion of the superior judiciary is brought to bear. Relief from such a judicial dispensation for those who feel wronged at the hands of the executive is at best an uncertain affair. A superior judiciary which has so far failed to punish transgressors against its own independence and dignity is an unlikely candidate for honors in upholding constitutionality in all and every case.

The traditional (in Pakistan) sword of Damocles which has hovered over the neck of any civilian government, the army, has for its own institutional and strategic reasons, plumped for a safe course of remaining as far as possible in the background while retaining the power to influence and even determine the high strategic decisions of state. Of course of late that strategy too has given way to more active intervention, not in political sphere so much as in the incremental take-over of one civilian institution after the other, in a glaring vote of no confidence in those institutions and the ability of the government to improve them.

Did that leave the government's master of all it surveyed? Virtually, except for one tiny island of sanity in the midst of collective madness. That island, is the press. It was inevitable therefore, that sooner or later, the penchant of the government to control all potential and actual centres of dissidence and resistance to its will, and the need to cover up the agglomeration of failures in so many fields, should coincide to persuade the government to take on this seemingly puny, but as circumstances seem to indicate, surprisingly resilient alternative voice. However, the assault on the press has not been an entirely frontal one. A subtlety for which the government is not renowned in other endeavours, has informed the cajoling, and where that has not seemed to work, browbeating of the independent print media. 

In the case of the present confrontation between the government and one of the leading newspaper groups, caution has been thrown to the winds in the interest of obtaining compliance with the government's own view of what the print media should or should not be doing (and who it should be doing it with as staff). That recklessness has come a cropper because it has, unfortunately from the government's point of view, been exposed to public view. The mediatory role attempted by the newspaper owners' bodies has only now been revealed in reasonable fullness, only to suggest that is a mea culpa which comes too late and is too little to satisfy the critics of what appears a pusillanimous attitude. This belated damage control and limitation exercise, therefore, does not appear to carry enough water.

The particular stand-off between that group of newspapers and the government may well be on the way to resolution, a result which could have been predicted from miles off as neither side stood to gain anything from a protracted struggle. However, irrespective of that particular result, the actual confrontation has spawned a new phenomenon which no one could have predicted. This phenomenon is the new found unity and strength of the working journalists, who have raised high the banner of press freedom from a non-partisan platform.

The central issue, therefore, is that freedoms, once given, has always proved difficult to take away if people have become aware through their own experience of their inherent worth. For another, civil society has awakened to an awareness of the importance of a free press for defending the rest of our tenuous freedoms under threat, freedoms achieved after great sacrifice and struggle extending over many decades. This freedom in particular, is one of those peculiar ones which actually is in the interest of the whole of society, including the incumbent government itself. Provided of course, there are wiser heads within the ranks of the ruling party than have been on display these last few months. Wisdom, whenever it dawns, be it late, is always something to be welcomed.

Government has the power of the state with which they can, should they so choose, demolish any part of the independent print media, or even the print media entire. But the cost itself would be of a magnitude which is difficult to measure today. It can only be guessed at in crystal ball fashion. The independent press should not be regarded simply as a dissident centre of free expression. It should also be seen by every incumbent government as it eyes  and ears, which can bring it the bad news along with the good. The government would do its cause a great deal of good were it to stop trying to shoot the messenger and pay heed to the message instead.

Were it to do otherwise, however, the government may well find that the hornets nest it has stirred up, and which is reflected in the spreading phenomenon of protest processions and hunger strikes all over the country, is the harbinger of even greater dangers for it and is continued rule. Democracy elevated the ruling party to power, only democracy can keep it there. A democracy which does not possess the tolerance to withstand the slings and arrows of dissident opinion, is a democracy in name only. The real struggle ahead is to see to it that our democratic space, which has shrunk steadily over the years since 1988, is now consolidated and expanded in the interests of a forward looking, free society advancing to meet the challenges of the third millennium.

(The Nation - 7.2.1999)

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