Book Review: Raza Rumi Hopeful of Pakistan’s Democratic Future

Pakistan is a developing state and a transitional society whose path to “democratic transition” is “fractious”, argues Raza Rumi in his The Fractious Path: Pakistan’s Democratic Transition (HarperCollins, 2016).

The book, which is a collection of his commentaries during 2008-2013, is thematically organised into five parts.

The first part takes a keen view of the political and constitutional developments that took place during the said period. Rumi hails the peaceful democratic power transfer from one civil government to another.

Moreover, the political and legal acumen of the People’s Party’s leadership is appreciated for it corrected the 1973 Constitution by repealing (58)2(b) that was (re)introduced by General Pervez Musharraf after toppling the Sharif government in October 1999.

The 18th Amendment, legislated in 2010, also provided a reformist framework, though theoretically, to the federal and provincial political elite which have failed to generate “elite consensus” over democratic decentralisation and retributive justice.

Offering Governance Reforms

Rumi has, in the proceeding part, candidly and extensively identified issues that beset contemporary Pakistani society and the state.

Pakistani society is increasingly getting radicalised owing to the existence of a ‘fractious’ worldview of a plethora of societal and religious organisations that are trained in self-righteousness and patronised by the state for security purposes.

Though Pakistan’s military under General Kiani termed “internal threat” as the primary enemy of Pakistan – and certain terrorist organisations were effectively targeted – India and Afghanistan-centric jihadi organisations are still viewed positively by certain circles of the security establishment.

Factually through, terrorism has taken toll of around 50,000 Pakistanis, such simmering problems of extremism, radicalism and terrorism are solvable. In this respect, Raza has candidly offered, in the third part, a set of solutions in terms of governance reforms and democratic institutionalism.

His emphasis on institutional and financial decentralisation and creation of a balanced federation is quite suggestive from the short to the long run. However, the then PPP government in the Centre and the PML-N government in Punjab struggled with the implementation of, for example, the Eighteenth Amendment. For example, the provincial Higher Education Commissions are still to be realised.

Similarly, powers to the local bodies were not shifted. In the absence of democratic institutionalisation, it is hard to cite non-fractious development in educational institutions, civil bureaucracy and scores of other civic organisations.

Foreign Policy Makers to Revisit Country’s Relations

Same is the case with Pakistan’s foreign policy, argues Rumi in the fourth part of the book.

Though the PPP government pursued a pro-peace stance with neighboring India, such an embryonic transition in this realm was strategically reversed by the country’s powerful army which maintains an antagonistic foreign policy towards India which is believed to have negated the right to self-determination to the Kashmiris. 

Same was the case of the US-Pakistan relations during the period under analysis. Though the PPP government attempted to assert by wooing Washington independently, such a course of action was thwarted by the military on account of structural and institutional imbalance in Pakistan’s civil-military relations.

Moreover, Rumi is right to expose fractions in the bilateral relations between the US and Pakistan from 2008 onwards.

Contrary to a unilinear view of the country’s foreign policy, Raza’s approach is ensconced in contextual set of data where actors and interests are central to the geostrategic game being played out in the South Asian region.

In addition, he has urged the foreign policy makers to re-visit the country’s relations with, for example, Bangladesh which became an independent country due to undemocratic and discriminatory policies of the ruling elite in the 1960s. For Pakistan to move forward in the region, at least, a constructive and meaningful investigation of (foreign) policy discourse will essentially and ultimately be beneficial for the country, posits Rumi.

Limiting Media’s Corporate Inclinations

The final part of the book analyses the nature and character of the media that unprecedentedly proliferated due to a liberal policy adopted by the Musharraf regime.

It was thus possible for a private TV channel such as Geo to highlight and expose contradictions and dichotomies in power relations at the societal and state level. 

The Musharraf regime, in my view, allowed such a freedom as it overall helped project a positive image of the former. However, the media freedom was curtailed by the regime, according to Rumi, when the private TV channels covered anti-Musharraf protests of the lawyers.

Nevertheless, he suggests the Pakistani media should also realise its social and ethical responsibilities by limiting its corporate inclinations which has overall affected democratisation and the consolidation of a cohesive and responsive citizenry.

Last but not the least, Rumi has added a valuable epilogue to the book which, in my view, serves not only as a summation of the early analyses, but also an objective assessment of political, socio-economic and geostrategic developments that has further fractured the (dis)course of democratic transition in post-2013 Pakistan.

He wrote, “Since 2014, Pakistan’s historic patterns are being repeated. The civilian governments have been weakened due to domestic protests… the ‘independent’ media have been tamed to a large extent… the military is back in the driving seat with a 20[15] constitutional amendment that allows for military courts to try civilians. There are underlying structural reasons for this to have happened, but the geopolitical context provides some explanation as well.”

Non-Democratic Means of Governance

As the foregoing suggest, structurally, the Sharif government (2013-present) has struggled to correct the civil-military imbalance. Moreover, lack of elite consensus over a democratic transition has perpetuated non-democratic means for governance and power maximisation among the stakeholders at the state and societal level.

However, I would tend to disagree with Rumi on the overwhelming impact of external variables on the contours of civil-military relations in Pakistan.

The China factor is likely to strengthen the Pakistani military institutionally, as Rumi has rightly noted, the Chinese like the Americans would not able to prevent any future coup for the dynamics of (direct) military intervention are domestic than foreign.

As regards the future trajectory of political and democratic scenarios, Rumi has deduced from the hard realities Pakistan is going through, the following pinching questions.

“Will Pakistan turn into a Republic with a functional democratic system, a hybrid system where the military would have a stake in governance or would it keep vacillating between authoritarianism and controlled democratic dispensations? These are difficult questions to answer. One thing is certain: the democratic process is likely to continue, making direct military takeovers difficult, if not possible”.

Optimism for Democracy

Indeed, there is no denying the only effective course of action for Pakistan lies in realising the empowerment of its people.

It is illogical and immoral to rule over 200 million without their consent and not being accountable by them. 

This notion, however, is ideal and, given the fractious path as empirically put forth by Rumi, a lot is required socially, politically and, importantly, intellectually. Until this happens, Pakistan is likely to tread on the fractious path, with a fractious democratic transition.

Finally, this book should be seen as a welcoming addition to the literature on democracy and social change in Pakistan for, in my view, the scholarship on such a subject is extremely limited and, when available, skewed in facts and opinion and undemocratic in approach.

On the other hand, Rumi is precise in statement, clear in argument, vivid in analysis and optimistic in the democratic future of Pakistan.

Title: The Fractious Path: Pakistan’s Democratic Transition
Authored: Raza Rumi
Pages: 356 (paperback)
Publisher: HarperCollins

The writer is a political scientist by training and professor by profession. He is DAAD, FDDI and Fulbright Fellow. Currently, he is a visiting scholar at Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley. He tweets @ejazbhatty

Join The Quint on WhatsApp. Type “JOIN” and send to 9910181818.