The endless road to democracy

Pakistan's decades-long, on-again, off-again relationship with democracy has been marred by both internal and external factors. Over the past three decades, Pakistan has held six general and a similar number of local body elections. It is difficult to complain about the number of elections, though the duration between these polls has varied widely. Whenever the people of Pakistan have been allowed to exercise their franchise, the levels of participation in the political process, even at the village level, have been fairly good. In the last three decades, while people have voted for their representatives and governments, they just have not been given a chance to vote out their representatives and governments. Either the military has stepped in or presidents have dissolved assemblies owing to disagreements with prime ministers.

Civilian presidents dissolved assemblies and dismissed the governments of Benazir Bhutto twice and of Nawaz Sharif once. But while these prime ministers were not allowed to complete their terms, presidential action did not disrupt the democratic process, as new assemblies were constituted throughout the 1988-1999 period through elections. However, the dismissal of the governments of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (5 July 1977) and Nawaz Sharif (12 October 1999) came at the hands of generals who introduced their own visions of civil-military democracy. If General Zia-ul Haq brought in a conservative agenda, General Pervez Musharraf took over with a comparatively liberal one. But both introduced democracies of their choice and defined governance on their own terms. And both fabricated would-be ruling parties overnight to advance their respective agendas.