milestone achieved

Today our much advertised grassroot level democracy delivered the nation neatly from all pretensions of free and fair electoral competition and into the hands of the same man for whose legitimization the whole shebang was originally created and his civilian lapdogs. Our beloved leader must be patting himself on the back, he has achieved what even Zia could not, the complete devolution of power to comprador elite ensuring his survival at the top. And if he can reinforce this achievement in 2007 that would be the last nail in the coffin. As things stand now, that is almost inevitable. The country would then be effectively reduced to a one-party system and he would be the unchallenged despot. From the looks of it, Pakistan is headed straight towards becoming a fascist state, client to none other than the burning torch of freedom and democracy, the great US of A.

The beauty of the entire thing is that elections have neither been outrightly rigged nor the electoral process unfairly tampered with as compared to the elections of the past. In fact, there was no need to. The system is designed such that the prize had to fall in the ruling party's lap. Let's start with a given: in Pakistan, there has never been any real party-based politics per se. People who get elected to the national and political legislatures do so on the basis of their own political contracting at the local level which is merely a function of their families' wealth and influence in the area. This means that the people who are generally elected are from the elite of a given area. And at the higher level, it is this elected elite that decides which party to support and which ideology to espouse. This is how it has happened whenever democracy's been given a chance since 1947. And it is also abundantly clear from past experiences that this political elite, both when in or out of power, is prone to switching affiliations and allegiances to suit its own interests. But the Devolution system offers such incentives that are every politico's dream come true, for it promises to empower them at the local level. In the past, local power had always been the domain of bureaucrats and civil servants and the local political elite lusted after it, and deeply resented the bureaucracy for it. Now the positions of District Nazims and Tehsil Nazims are so enticing that people are willing to give up their seats in the National Assembly for them. And it is this lust for local power that the powers in Islamabad have optimally exploited. The local political elites know that if they toe the line and unite under the banner of the King's party, they would get to share these lucrative posts created at the local level. Else, they would have to face the entire machinery of the state against them. This is why you get to see people who would normally be traditional rivals in the local political arena trying to create an atmosphere of a truce. So the local politico's, using all their instincts for side-switiching and maximum power-grabbing, line up behind the hand that is supposed to feed them. And then with all proper ado, the General's cronies distribute the hallowed posts among these people. Someone gets the District, the other the Tehsil. All major political groupings at the local level are satisfied and there remains no cause for dissent. The ruling party makes a clean sweep in an election that was on a non-party basis in the first place. And so in October 2005, for gaining limited power over limited pieces of land, our political elite has sold out the entire nation to a man who has no business being where he is today, vindicated him and made him even more powerful, if that is possible. In essence, our entire political elite has been bribed without them even realising it. The General and his associates have doled out these positions of prominence and the local elites have lapped them up like hungry street dogs. They have sold their conscience and their souls. And if this trend is strengthened in 2007 and the General's current clients remain loyal to him, this country is headed for absolutism. Then, I think, he would be crowned absolute monarch and worshipped as the image of God upon this Earth, ruler by Divine right. I wonder though who the Crown Prince would be.