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Dictatorship of Democracy

Democracy needs strong political parties. Throughout the political history of Pakistan, no party had the credentials of being a true democratic party with ideological grassroots.

By Dr. Qasim Sodhar | May 2021

Dictatorship-Democracy

Pakistan has followed the British legacy from the very earlier days of its inception. The rulers of the country not only followed the colonial legacy in terms of constitutional mechanism as the Provisional Constitution was based on the Indian Act of 1935 but the same administrative pattern like all powers were given to the Governor-General rather the Prime Minister, was followed. This was a major flaw that we did not make any mechanism according to our own then prevailing conditions of the country; we followed British India without realizing that the dynamics had changed.

As for the debate that which forms of government, democracy or dictatorship are suitable for Pakistan is concerned it is very obvious that dictatorship is not the viable solution in a federal country where a lot of differences of ethnicities and religion, etc. exist. A dictatorship is a form of government in which, by surpassing all kinds of freedoms of expression and bypassing the constitution, a person rules the country according to his/her wish. We have many examples of dictatorship and authoritarian power mechanisms the world over like Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy. There are different types of dictatorships. One the most common type is authoritarian rule but there is also a concept of “dictatorship of the proletariat”.

The concept of proletariat dictatorship is used by those who believe in Communist ideology as, according to Karl Marx, there are “six stages — primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, capitalism, socialism and finally global, stateless communism”. Marx believed that societies would pass through all these stages. The last stage suggested by Marx is ‘stateless communism’; this actually reflects the concept of proletariat dictatorship, where the majority, the people, will rule without having any state mechanism and society would become classless. With respect to the terminology, the dictatorship of the proletariat reflects the concept of ‘dictatorship’, but this is actually real democracy in the sense that it represents the wider majority of the oppressed people.

Yet, this concept given by Karl Marx is opposite to the common concept of dictatorship, but still, we cannot find a single example the world over that any society has passed through these stages. In fact, many societies in the world, including Russia, China, Cuba, and Vietnam, etc., have passed through the fifth stage, i.e. socialism, but not to the sixth stage due to different internal and external reasons.

Democracy has been widely practiced in different parts of the world; there are variations in the concept but the real definition of democracy was given by US President Abraham Lincoln that “democracy is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people”. Unfortunately, the people of Pakistan have never experienced such democracy.

In Pakistan all political and administrative functions continued without a Constitution till 1956. The first Constitution of 1956 did not represent the people of Pakistan because one year earlier One-Unit had been imposed against the wishes of the people of all provinces, except Punjab. Though the country was already passing through political and administrative issues, Martial Law was imposed in 1958, which created hindrances in the democratic process. Field Marshal Ayub Khan introduced his formula of ‘Basic Democracy’ which was a sort of local government. He introduced a new Constitution in 1962; it supported the Presidential form of government.

However, after the separation of East Pakistan, when Bhutto came to power, he launched a Constitution in 1973 which supported bicameralism, but in practice, democracy was never evident in th real sense because he suppressed all dissident voices and overthrew the elected government of the National Awami Party in Balochistan. After Bhutto, Gen. Zia’s regime not only negated the spirit of democracy but also attained records of cruelty and injustice with women, religious minorities, and those who believed in democratic norms.

The country again faced political and administrative disturbances during the decade of the 1990s, when each elected government could not sustain for more than two years. This situation led to another period in which Gen. Parvez Musharraf ruled the country. The two major political parties PPP and PML-N, signed the Charter of Democracy and promised to struggle for ‘Civilian Supremacy’. The CoD was fruitful only in the sense that the civilian governments of PPP and the PML-N completed their tenures for the first time but the Charter of Democracy too failed in bringing real democracy to Pakistan.

In a nutshell, dictatorships have always damaged the country, but unfortunately, the kind of democracy being practiced to this day is a hybrid dispensation. It is time for the powerful forces to come out of the dilemma of dictatorship and democracy and let real democracy flourish in the country, which is the only viable solution to get rid of political and administrative problems. It is an irony that Pakistan is in search for such a system but only through the army!

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One thought on “Dictatorship of Democracy”

  • Sajid Ali
    May 8, 2021 at 8:03 pm
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    True mirror of Pakistani politics has been discussed from initial stage to current scenario. But the last sentence has the same thing which we have been repeating the mistakes against army for democracy.

    Reply