Editoral-Major policy rethink By Shahid Javed Burki ~ .

THE great virtue of democratic systems is that the policies governments adopt reflect the will of the people. While Pakistan is tending towards the adoption of democracy as the preferred system of governance it is quite clear that the country is not there as yet.

If it had become a fully representative system some of the approaches being pursued in foreign affairs would not have been adopted.

In this space last week I argued that economics rather than ideology or history’s many burdens should inform the making of public policy. That is not happening. While people want the government to focus on their economic situation that has markedly deteriorated over the last several years, some of the powerful policymakers continue to focus on what for the common citizens must be marginal issues. This is happening since the people have a poor voice in the making of policy.

In weak political systems strong institutions fill the vacuum. This happened in the case of Pakistan when first the powerful civil service and then the military stepped in and dominated policymaking for most of the country’s turbulent history. Even when these institutions believed that they were working for the good of the country and its citizenry they could not possibly forsake their narrower interests. No matter how dysfunctional a political system is — and Pakistan’s system at this time is not functioning well — it is still better than a system that has a narrow base.

But the transition to a more representative system will not be smooth or easy. In moving forward with the development of the political system, those who are taking the lead will need to take account of what economists call ‘path dependence’. This means that the past has a strong influence on the present. The path followed in the past cannot be easily abandoned for something that is new. That is certainly the case in Pakistan, a country going through major political change. A great deal of caution will have to be shown so that the strong interests that have dominated the system don’t reassert themselves. But the fear that that might happen should not paralyse the move towards democracy.

In the case of Pakistan, the political system was not made up of three components that have given, for instance, the American structure the checks and balances the country’s founding fathers recognised were essential to ensure stability. They strongly believed that no single segment of the population should be able to dominate to the disadvantage of the others. In pursuit of this objective they divided responsibilities among the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government. If one of these attempted domination, it was checked by the other two.

The latest manifestation of this is the way the supreme court, under the leadership of John Roberts, a highly conservative judge, is attempting to contain the pursuit of the ‘big government’ approach being followed by the administration headed by President Barack Obama. This conflict will ultimately get resolved by the American Congress as it reinterprets the country’s constitution in light of what the people want now and not what the founders thought should be the principles of governance.

In Pakistan’s case, the political system has four rather than three branches. The military is the fourth component. While it has stepped back to allow the political system to have the space in which it can develop further, it is no secret that it is happy to intervene when it believes that the other branches of the government are putting the country’s security at risk.

Two interventions in particular — in 1958 when Gen Ayub Khan overthrew a legally constituted government and again in 1977 when Gen Ziaul Haq removed Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto from power — the military came in, said its leaders, ‘to save the country from meltdown’. The two other interventions were prompted by personal ambition. But how could the military decide what posed risks to the country’s security?

The Zia period provides an interesting case study of how the will of one man came to prevail over the will of society. Zia ordered Islamisation on the pretext that that is what the people had wanted all along. By moving in that direction, he set the country on a course from which it will take a long time and a great deal of effort to depart.

How did Zia conclude that Islamisation is what people wanted when the people had not voted in significant numbers for any Islamic party? It was not the will of the people that Zia was minding but his own. What prompted Zia to fight the American war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan by creating a new force of Islamic fighters that eventually morphed into the Taliban? Had the issue been openly debated the result may have been very different.

The current ambivalence of Islamabad towards two of the more important policies that will shape the country’s future reflects the tussle for influence between the military and the representatives of the people. One example of this is the way the military establishment views India. The military continues to see India as the main threat to Pakistan’s security and continues to believe that in Afghanistan it should seek strategic depth in case of hostile activity by India. In other words, the military continues to place India’s seeming hostility towards Pakistan at the centre of its concerns.

Whether suspicions about India’s intentions should preoccupy the policymakers to the extent that they inhibit the economic development of the country and the welfare of the citizenry is something that needs to be debated openly and by the representatives of the people in the forum that is meant to serve that purpose. That, of course, is the National Assembly.

But, as is often said, democracies function well only when the citizenry is well educated and informed about the issues. This is where the media and the civil society enter the picture. They too have to shed some of the old biases and look at the situation anew in light of the enormous changes that have occurred inside and outside Pakistan. If that were to happen — and there are indications that may be occurring — we may see a major change in the way we view the world outside our borders.