General Musharraf's Customized Democracy - The Spirit of Democracy

A friend of mine once commented during a conversation “I strongly believe that the original democracy must be given a chance instead of the "customized democracy" as was practiced by General Musharraf”.

Now here I have problems with both “Original” and “Democracy” in Pakistani context. First of all let’s understand what democracy is and what are its prerequisites, then I will follow it by string of arguments proving my theory that autocracy and customized democracy is proven to be the best mode of Governance for developing countries: Democracy – There is a demos, a group which makes political decisions by some form of collective procedure. In modern democracies the demos is the nation, and citizenship is usually equivalent to membership. Now if we understand democracy there are some basic prerequisites to democracy:

1. Freedom to make decision – I am arguing here that we don’t even fulfill the 1st criteria. Landlords, Jagirdaars influence the decision making of people through their ownership of masses of lands that includes villages even towns, particularly in rural areas. Land reform is the first step towards democracy which was ignored on our side after partition. Why Indian democracy is able to stand (somehow or other) is primarily due to Land reforms.

2. Education – A minimum level of education is prerequisite for a successful democratic process. In a country where literacy rate is merely 36% (including even those who are just able to read or write their names), what kind of democracy are we expecting? The reason we have a voters turnout of 30% - 35% is due to the fact that we lack the above two criteria.

3. Prosperity – Theorists say that some level of economic prosperity is required to enable a sustainable “original” democracy. Prosperity creates time and leisure, which can be used for democratic participation, public life and other uses of human rights. We often see democratic aspirations and claims of rights arising almost automatically in states that do well economically (see for example Taiwan, Korea and many South-American countries in the 1980s). Unequal wealth or insufficient wealth for some classes of the population is often a characteristic of a lack of economic development and at the same time it hinders the proper functioning of democracy. Those who are rich will monopolize the democratic procedures not only because of the forced withdrawal of the poor, but also because of their privileged access to the media, education, representative institutions etc. Furthermore, large differences in wealth and bad economic performances are destabilizing for any form of government - democracy included - because they cause revolt.

4. Free Markets – Democracy and the free market often contradict each other: the uneven distribution of wealth which one can often find in a free market system tends to falsify democratic political processes because wealth means influence; and democratic decisions often impose restrictions on a free market. However, after attainment of certain level of prosperity as a society, free markets and democracy tend to promote each other. (Milton Freedman in The Wall Street Journal, February 12th, 1997

5. Rule of Law – Independent judiciary that enforces rule of law is also a prerequisite of sustainable democratic process. Those who believe that our current judiciary is “Independent” please amend your misconception (I will not get into debate of how at the moment). However, it may evolve into one later gradually. All above arguments support my point that unless we have these prerequisites, spirit of democracy and democracy itself will cease to exist. Forget about “original”. Also please do not confuse between a “democratic process” and “democracy itself with its true essence”. Conducting elections is merely a democratic process not democracy itself with its essence. Those who are currently raising slogans of democracy and so called declare themselves as “savior of democracy” are a bunch of hypocrites and corrupt elites which the time has proven and re-proven. Here I would like to clarify that by “customized democracy” I mean to say that people have some say in government, yet there is check over the electoral process by strong leader (President). A strong leader can in such system manipulate laws and customize systems according to requirement of that particular time. Having said that, let me present another side of the argument regarding the “Coup of October 1999”. First of all dictatorship (termed used for Musharraf’s era) is some form of Ruler ship seized against the will of the people. But those who have forgotten, let me remind them that when Musharraf seized power, masses of public celebrated on streets of Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta and Islamabad. Gallop surveys and IRI research polls showed that Musharraf was highly popular in masses till 2006. However, subsequently his popularity declined due to various controversial reasons. So the argument here is that Power seized by General was NOT against the will of people (though democratic process wasn’t followed). Subsequently, we know that “essence of democracy” was introduced by Local Body System and Media. People at the lowest level has access to government. Massive development in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad was witnessed. Yes one could argue that Musharraf formula was “customized democracy”. But I am leading my argument to the fact that this was not some unique model applied by Musharraf. As a matter of fact in developing countries/economies such model has proven to be the optimal model which led to evolution systems more effectively eventually leading to so called “original democracy”. My friend also commented “"educated and moderate" class is creeping by the heels of hailing a person and not an institution”. For the knowledge of my misguided friend, I would like to say that nations have changed their fortunes by virtue of one strong leader. Vision of one man leading from the front in “difficult times” has led to eventual freedom and prosperity of nation. Institutions develop and strengthen subsequently. I will substantiate this by examples: 1. South Korea: Got independence on 15th August 1948. South Korea experienced alternating periods of autocratic and democratic rule. However, South Korean establishment has been accused of manipulating democracies particularly from 1962 – 1979.Elections were held in Korea immediately after independence in 1947, the democratic government merely completed two years was over thrown by a military coup. Military ruled Korea till 1960. Elections held in 1960 due to student revolution but again after two years of democracy it was over thrown by Military Dictator “Park Chung Hee”. The military leaders promised to return the government to a democratic system as soon as possible. On December 2, 1962, a referendum was held on returning to a presidential system of rule, which was allegedly passed with a 78% majority. Park and the other military leaders pledged not to run for office in the next elections. However, Park ran for president anyway, winning narrowly in the election of 1963. From 1962 – 1971 Park Chung Hee served as President with a “customized democracy”. In 1972 due to political turmoil in the country he declared emergency in the country and announced promulgation of Martial Law. From 1973 t0 1979 Park had complete control over parliament. This era was also known as exceptional economic boom era for South Korea. First true democratic elections were held in 1987 while it was in 1992 that South Korea witnessed true democracy with independently elected president. However by 1992 South Korea had already been declared as Asian golden economy. Seoul is now one of the most developed cities of the world while Korea has entered into list of Developed countries leaving behind a list of Developing countries. (Notice the similarity with Musharraf Model).

Moral: One man, seized power as military dictator, ran government with “customized democracy” saw the nation through difficult times. He is seen as someone who introduced Industrial revolution in Korea. Media and Telecommunication boomed in his era. Education was promoted, GDP per Capita increased many folds, mixed market economy was developed, rule of law was established in late 1970s, prerequisites of democracy fulfilled, institutions and systems evolved gradually and then Korea saw democracy which what it is today.

2. Malysia: If one studies the Malaysian political form of government, its neither presidential nor parliamentary. By no means it fulfills the western definition of democracy. Neither can it be classified as autocracy. However, The politics of Malaysia takes place in the framework of a constitutional monarchy where Monarch (The Yang di-Pertuan Agong) is head of state and the Prime Minister of Malaysia is the head of government. I will call it a “customized democracy” which has been customized to needs of Malaysian people and it is serving well for the country given its economic prosperity and development in over a decade or so.

3. Egypt: Hosni Mubarak is the President of Egypt since 1981 and running the country under “customized democracy”. Egypt is classified as one of the leading developing countries and is one of the prosperous non oil producing Arab economies. Concluding, my argument is that developing countries like Pakistan which has to establish on their own resources (unlike many Oil Producing Countries) a country which has religious and ethnic divides, which is suffering from religious extremism, it is imperative to have a strong leader having control over the government, yet has excess to general public (local governments etc), allow free media (with certain regulatory amendments), has a bunch of intellectual cabinet which do not have political motives, visionary economic manager, fewer ministries and strong law enforcing bodies. If such system is allowed to rule for at least a 20 years, our progress and prosperity is inevitable. Democracy will follow automatically and stronger institutions will evolve. Musharraf started as a reformist and tried to implement this model but it is very unfortunate for every Pakistani that he didn’t manage to pull off enough time to complete what he started, amid some major distractions (9/11 to be the biggest one).