Elections Won’t Be a Panacea

South Asians vote frequently and fervently. Its governments know how to throw a good party, with huge rallies, long candidate lists and rousing speeches; amid mayhem and the occasional murder, millions of voters steadfastly fulfill their democratic duties. If elections are an act of faith in political participation, South Asians are true believers.

But is their faith always justified? This question looms large in the region this week, as Pakistan’s military rulers prepare for an October election that is unlikely to deliver what anyone needs. Pakistanis are bracing for a contest that their president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, claims will restore civilians to some sort of power. But the conditions he has set may make voters wonder whether casting ballots solves anything at all.

Pakistan’s constitution ensures the right to vote, but that right has been abused as often as it has been respected. At their best, elections have not only allowed Pakistanis to choose their leaders, freely and fairly, but also have helped clean up political abuses and restore civilian government when the army has ruled for too long. At their worst, however, Pakistan’s elections are tepid, inconclusive, manipulated affairs that imitate democracy without delivering it and too often are nullified by coups d’etat.

The October election is shaping up to be long on pretense and short on goodwill, and may well add to the country’s political problems without solving a thing. After almost three years of military rule, some people are itching to return to politics. Seventy-one parties have successfully registered--58 others were rejected--and even exiled leaders are itching to return to the fray. But while elections can move politics forward, everything about this one--from Musharraf’s ambivalence about relinquishing power to the dreary repeat performances of tired opponents--suggests a country stuck in an unfinished past.

Since his coup in October 1999, Musharraf has been clear about his distaste for politics, politicians and, more generally, civilian rule. October’s elections were forced on him by the international community and Pakistan’s courts: In a grand compromise shortly after Musharraf seized power, they allowed him to rule but pushed him to set an election timetable. No doubt the army hoped election day would never arrive. But while he is following the letter of the Supreme Court’s instructions, the spirit of the election he has engineered has created a confusing political environment for candidates and voters alike.

Last April, after more than two years of restructuring the government--ostensibly to clean up corruption but also to remove irritating politicians from public life and office--Musharraf rigged a referendum to extend his rule for five more years. He claimed that his continued presence would lend stability to a notoriously insecure and violence-prone country, but the effect of this unconstitutional, unpopular maneuver was to undercut parliamentary powers.

Musharraf has also worked hard to exclude troublesome politicians and obstreperous parties to ensure that he gets only the parliament he wants. Voters will elect a National Assembly in October, but the Assembly won’t be allowed to perform one of its primary jobs--electing the president--because Musharraf is already there.

Pakistan’s travails, however, are much deeper than the reluctant ambitions of one relatively amiable general. After decades of direct military rule, interspersed with fragile civilian governments that rely on army backing to retain even a modicum of authority, the army calls the shots in Pakistan. It also calls the country’s political bluff, easily and often. Civilian leaders practice contradiction: They often speak in carefully modulated democratic language but equally often justify the army’s primacy in government. Fearful of being left out of politics, equally worried that elections will be canceled if they protest too much, they rush to participate in almost any kind of election, even if it is dreadfully flawed.

These are the perpetual conundrums of Pakistan’s creaky political machine. Musharraf and the army, like so many of their predecessors, think that politicians are weak and fatally ambitious; politicians understandably believe that the longer they remain out of power, the weaker the public will think they are and the weaker they will become. The army sets the rules, the political elite complains and obeys, and elections turn into superficial shows rather than fundamental democratic processes. The basic role of democratic elections--to create and ensure choice--is lost. In the process, Pakistanis lose the chance to judge the future of democracy, which seems unattainable, or Musharraf’s rule, which simply won’t go away.

The problem is, Musharraf’s diagnosis of Pakistan’s ills, while not quite correct, is not completely wrong, either. Pakistan has become a place where corruption flourishes and democracy withers, where poverty is hard to tame and accountability is harder to sustain. But while the army thinks that politicians are the problem, the army’s governance has proved that military rule is certainly not the answer. Musharraf’s complicated reform agenda has turned government inside out without solving basic social problems.

The last three years may testify to the difficulties of reform, but even more, they demonstrate that means and ends cannot be separated. Reform--including reforming electoral politics--requires democratic preparation, public participation and all the inconvenience, convolution and imprecision that civilian politics bring to civic life.

Musharraf’s political calculations underscore his understanding of context and circumstances in setting the content and consequences of political life. He knows the difference between the “free, fair and transparent” election he has promised and the real one he has so carefully choreographed. He realizes that Pakistanis are losing patience with him and the world is rapidly losing patience with Pakistan. He is bargaining that a partial transfer of power will be enough to stave off external critics, and just enough to occupy domestic opponents without giving them a real chance at power. After all, with a global war on terrorism to worry about, will Pakistan’s donors and allies care much about one more failed election in one more poor, troubled country?

Surely they should. Once an international pariah, then South Asia’s best chance against terrorism, Musharraf’s army rule now risks becoming the worst kind of burden for Pakistan and everyone who deals with it--an unfortunate, ineffective annoyance that might never disappear. His election will be hard to salvage, so perhaps this is the moment for Pakistan to return to the drawing board--to find a way to ensure a full transfer of power, democratically. At the least, this is where a new conversation about Pakistan might usefully begin: imagining, aloud, the ways that Pakistan can triumph over its self-defeating inheritances and allow its citizens to speak forthrightly on their own behalf.