The Choice Is Not Between Democracy and Chaos

When Pakistan’s military chief, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, seized power from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif last week, the world breathed a collective sigh of recognition. Military coups, after all, are familiar in Pakistan, and after more than a decade of democracy gone awry, foreign observers and domestic commentators are almost unanimous in the diagnosis of the country’s ills. Blaming corrupt leaders, a failing economy, foreign-policy misadventures and violence in society, most reports have accepted the terms set by Musharraf in his first broadcast after the coup: The tide of “turmoil and uncertainty” must be stemmed, and the military is an instrument for correcting these woes.

In one dangerous stroke, democracy has been paired with chaos and counterpoised with order. The view that imposed government offers an opportunity for stability in South Asia contrasts, though not sharply enough, with statements from foreign governments that pay lip service to the formal structures of democratic rule. The U.S. State Department and, even more strongly, the European Union have warned against the imposition of martial law and reiterated the need to restore elected government.

Between interpretations and mantras of civic republicanism lies the vast, complex and contradictory country of Pakistan. Fifty-two years of independence have yet to produce the prosperous, ideologically secure and politically stable state that its founders envisioned. The prickly workings of elected government have almost always seemed at odds with the imperatives of national security. This perceived dualism--between running the state, and running it well and safely--has infected political rhetoric since 1947 and has permeated public consciousness in ways that have undercut democracy every time it is tried.

When Pakistan’s first military dictator, whose 1958 coup followed a decade unsurpassed in political indecision, accused politicians of turning the country into a “laughingstock,” the country seemed to agree. The silence that signaled acquiescence in the military experiment, however, turned into riots a decade later. The next dictator, paying no heed to loud rumblings of democratic egalitarianism, managed to lead the country into ruinous civil war.

When Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq took power just a few years later, after a brief interlude of civilian government, Pakistanis again appeared to welcome a military regime. But within a decade, the country was ungovernable: The ravages of uncivil governance and self-destructive foreign entanglements created an unworkable polity, an economy built on air and a civil-military relationship that did disservice to both. The decade of civilian rule that followed Zia’s death has witnessed a struggle to overcome the inheritance of a military state to enter a global economy that has little time for small, fragile nations.

Pakistan’s history is testament to the misperceptions with which its own citizens, and, even more, foreign interlocutors, have greeted it. Those who attest now to the corruptions of civilian government conveniently forget that the nexus of personal profit and political gain began under military rule in the 1960s. Those who decry foreign-policy failures under civilian rule, including the recent pullback from Kashmir that so irritated the army, forget that a military government was responsible for the debacles of the 1965 and 1971 wars, and the horrible imbroglio in Afghanistan that continues today. Those who lament the inadequacies of civilian-led economy are beset by a handy amnesia that erases the imbalances of military budgets and the debaucheries of economics without accountability.

Pakistan’s history also offers a sad tale of political incompetence and dishonesty. The commonweal, a concept missing from parliamentary debate, has been degraded through decades of indifference by politicians insulated from the effects of the policies they haphazardly endorse. Democratic constitutionalism, endangered by politicians who manipulate law to disenfranchise voters and outlaw dissent, is revived only when an ousted government seeks ways to argue for its restoration. Civic institutions, whose integrity requires protection at least as much as the physical borders of the country, have been undercut, time and again, by those who believe the courts should endorse the prerogatives of power.

In short, Pakistan’s battle is not between military and civilian rule, but between democracy and anything else. Those who argue for interim, unelected governments, whether filled by officers or technocrats, create a dangerous distinction between the country and its people. Pakistan, like every other country, is not simply a place: It is the accumulation of its people and their needs, expectations and desires. The integrity of the place itself, of course, requires protection, a sentiment reiterated by Musharraf last week. But the best protection in Pakistan can only come from Pakistanis--and only democracy can, in the end, find ways to arbitrate the deafening discord that overwhelms today’s misguided and divisive politics.

Neither Sharif nor former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, nor the countless interim governments that have separated them from one another, have fully absorbed the lessons that democracy can teach. Since Zia’s death, the country has been seized by a frenzy of political overkill: In the name of democracy, institutions were trampled, elections suborned and rights violated. In response, and under the pretext of restoring order, authoritarianism has been elevated to the rank of religious doctrine, while religion itself has been used as an instrument of political annihilation.

Democracy in Pakistan has two prerequisite. First, those who have been left out of politics must be offered a way in: Political parties and institutions must, finally, be opened to democratic participation. Without popular participation, democracy has little meaning. To make it real, a new constitution may be needed and, at the least, renewed commitment to the spirit of democratic constitutionalism.

Second, outside interlocutors--governments, banks, investors--must recognize that plugging a few holes in a shaky dike cannot substitute for wholesale reform. Given Pakistan’s history, that reform is likely to be revolutionary--and revolution is neither possible nor lasting without democracy that protects, vigilantly, the right to political participation.

The country Musharraf seeks to control has been deeply wounded by the depredations of military rule, weak elected governments, intense ideological division and the profound dependency of an inexplicably underdeveloped economy. His task, no matter how he chooses to do it, is unenviable: Leading Pakistan may be one of the hardest jobs in politics today. To do it well will mean sacrificing grand gesture--now that an extra-constitutional coup has taken place--to attend to the enormous needs of an understandably restive people.

Toward the end of his life, India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was asked what was hardest about his job. His response: to achieve just ends through just means. He could well have been talking about Pakistan today.