Two weeks ago, I wrote of the three major tests for those who hope to transform Pakistan from its “muddle through” path toward mediocrity and eventual failure, toward a virtuous circle leading to a modern society, economy, and political structure. The tests are:
1) Will the elected politicians choose to, and be able to, break their chain of dependency on the religious parties?
2) Will these same politicians – who seem to have recognized the counterproductive nature of zero-sum politics – change the patrimonial character of their parties to make them democratic and issue oriented, to reflect the urban society that Pakistan is becoming?
3) As a natural result of that, can the political parties grasp the nettle of structural economic reform, widening the tax net to bring in the entire society into a formal economy that raises adequate revenue to live within its means while providing the services, especially in health and education, to make Pakistan really competitive in a globalized economy?
These questions concern civil society politicians and their parties, and would in any society cause anxiety about the future. Politicians in most countries are not known for their perspicacity, their analytic depth, or their willingness to take risks. In Pakistan, however, as all readers will already be mumbling to themselves, there is an “elephant in the room” which cannot be ignored. The army will determine whether civil society reform efforts of the kind listed above have even a prayer of being answered positively. And the answer to the question of where the army stands on the question of such root and branch reform is, as far as I can tell, a logical contradiction.
Let’s start by analyzing the three tests I outlined above. There was good news on the first test – breaking civil society politicians’ dependency on religious parties – when the Supreme Court upheld the verdict on Mumtaz Qadri and the PML-N government went forward with his execution. The ensuing demonstrations by some of the religious parties was tolerated by the government, even though it brought much inconvenience to the capital’s citizens. But the fact that the PMN-N government, which has often played footsie with the religious parties, went ahead without hesitation surprised a great many observers (and I think the religious parties themselves).
The other drama this year — the Protection of Women Act of 2015 — has also played out successfully, with the help of some clever wording. It was passed by the Punjab Assembly and was signed by the governor. The Punjab government has said that it is now law, I understand, and that it will implement it. The religious parties protested, and tried to play hard ball by using the Panama Papers scandal. The Council of Islamic Ideology labeled it “un-Islamic,” but it seems to have got through. Thus two small lights at the end of a long tunnel on this test.
On the second test – shifting from patrimonial to modern, issue-oriented democratic parties – is obviously a long-term evolutionary process. This will be forced to some extent by the increasingly urban nature of the Pakistani society (though it is said that some of the rural social networks, the biraderis etc, follow rural migrants to the urban areas). It will also be a function of the slow but increasing pressure by civil society reformers to democratize the parties. Ian Talbot, in his recent book “Pakistan: A New History,” notes one step forward on this test. The “zero-sum” nature of Pakistani politics has diminished in the years since the “democratic interlude” of 1988-2001. In that era, the parties out of power schemed to get back in, often by conniving with the army to replace the party in power. Since the return of elected governments in 2008, the two main parties, when out of power, remained aloof from involving the military in their political squabbles. (This may not be true of the other opposition parties.) Thus one small step forward in this test, but it is early days yet.
The third test has so far been flunked by every government, civilian and military, as far as I can make out, since Ayub Khan’s time. Like Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, Pakistan has depended on the “kindness of strangers” for about 45 years. Sometimes these strangers were the international financial organizations, usually pushed a bit by the Western powers’ views that Pakistan was “strategic.” Sometimes it was the Western powers themselves, allied with Pakistan against either the Soviet Union or Al Qaeda. Sometimes it was Pakistanis themselves, not those in the government or the National Assembly, but those working abroad sending money to their families.
This test is repeated almost every year as the government in power presents its budget – and plans for structural reform (or better yet, the beginning of a multi-year, perhaps multi-decade, structural reform), including privatization and especially tax reform. Widening the tax net significantly and equitably would help recapture revenue streams that have gone missing over 45 years.
In the view of some of my friends who watch carefully, since this is the last full-year budget of this government, it is its last chance, at least this time around, to leave a mark for its successors to follow. To begin the process of economic reform would be a historical legacy, which might even lead to its being able to continue to follow that path. But in the fog of political crisis, there is little evidence that anything as revolutionary as economic reform is being thought about. As usual in Pakistani politics, the aim seems to be limited to staying in office until voted out, which is, of course, quite likely if the record of accomplishment is little beyond having stayed in power for the full term. That would have the two main parties on an equal basis as far as accomplishment goes. What then?
I want to come back to the elephant in the room. I am sure the army would say it supported the political and economic reforms outlined in the discussion above. And yet, these reforms also imply “normalization” of two kinds that involve the army — normalization of relations with an India rapidly emerging onto the world stage, and normalization of civil-military relations in Pakistan. One cannot happen without the other. Clearly, at some level, the army understands this connection and clings tenaciously to its view that India remains the existential enemy, so as to block any progress in the civil-military balance (which appears to be tipping toward the military because of the Panama Paper crisis). As Talbot says toward the end of his excellent book, reforms in one area “are likely to improve reform prospects in another”. There would be a domino effect. And if reform strengthens the state, it increases the legitimacy of civilian governments and decreases the leverage of the army. How is it that a government headed by a politician who clearly desires civilian control of the military has missed this point?
The author is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC and a former US diplomat who was Ambassador to Pakistan and Bangladesh, and Chief of Mission in Liberia
1) Will the elected politicians choose to, and be able to, break their chain of dependency on the religious parties?
2) Will these same politicians – who seem to have recognized the counterproductive nature of zero-sum politics – change the patrimonial character of their parties to make them democratic and issue oriented, to reflect the urban society that Pakistan is becoming?
3) As a natural result of that, can the political parties grasp the nettle of structural economic reform, widening the tax net to bring in the entire society into a formal economy that raises adequate revenue to live within its means while providing the services, especially in health and education, to make Pakistan really competitive in a globalized economy?
These questions concern civil society politicians and their parties, and would in any society cause anxiety about the future. Politicians in most countries are not known for their perspicacity, their analytic depth, or their willingness to take risks. In Pakistan, however, as all readers will already be mumbling to themselves, there is an “elephant in the room” which cannot be ignored. The army will determine whether civil society reform efforts of the kind listed above have even a prayer of being answered positively. And the answer to the question of where the army stands on the question of such root and branch reform is, as far as I can tell, a logical contradiction.
The third test has so far been flunked by every government
Let’s start by analyzing the three tests I outlined above. There was good news on the first test – breaking civil society politicians’ dependency on religious parties – when the Supreme Court upheld the verdict on Mumtaz Qadri and the PML-N government went forward with his execution. The ensuing demonstrations by some of the religious parties was tolerated by the government, even though it brought much inconvenience to the capital’s citizens. But the fact that the PMN-N government, which has often played footsie with the religious parties, went ahead without hesitation surprised a great many observers (and I think the religious parties themselves).
The other drama this year — the Protection of Women Act of 2015 — has also played out successfully, with the help of some clever wording. It was passed by the Punjab Assembly and was signed by the governor. The Punjab government has said that it is now law, I understand, and that it will implement it. The religious parties protested, and tried to play hard ball by using the Panama Papers scandal. The Council of Islamic Ideology labeled it “un-Islamic,” but it seems to have got through. Thus two small lights at the end of a long tunnel on this test.
On the second test – shifting from patrimonial to modern, issue-oriented democratic parties – is obviously a long-term evolutionary process. This will be forced to some extent by the increasingly urban nature of the Pakistani society (though it is said that some of the rural social networks, the biraderis etc, follow rural migrants to the urban areas). It will also be a function of the slow but increasing pressure by civil society reformers to democratize the parties. Ian Talbot, in his recent book “Pakistan: A New History,” notes one step forward on this test. The “zero-sum” nature of Pakistani politics has diminished in the years since the “democratic interlude” of 1988-2001. In that era, the parties out of power schemed to get back in, often by conniving with the army to replace the party in power. Since the return of elected governments in 2008, the two main parties, when out of power, remained aloof from involving the military in their political squabbles. (This may not be true of the other opposition parties.) Thus one small step forward in this test, but it is early days yet.
The third test has so far been flunked by every government, civilian and military, as far as I can make out, since Ayub Khan’s time. Like Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, Pakistan has depended on the “kindness of strangers” for about 45 years. Sometimes these strangers were the international financial organizations, usually pushed a bit by the Western powers’ views that Pakistan was “strategic.” Sometimes it was the Western powers themselves, allied with Pakistan against either the Soviet Union or Al Qaeda. Sometimes it was Pakistanis themselves, not those in the government or the National Assembly, but those working abroad sending money to their families.
The 'zero-sum' nature of Pakistani politics has changed
This test is repeated almost every year as the government in power presents its budget – and plans for structural reform (or better yet, the beginning of a multi-year, perhaps multi-decade, structural reform), including privatization and especially tax reform. Widening the tax net significantly and equitably would help recapture revenue streams that have gone missing over 45 years.
In the view of some of my friends who watch carefully, since this is the last full-year budget of this government, it is its last chance, at least this time around, to leave a mark for its successors to follow. To begin the process of economic reform would be a historical legacy, which might even lead to its being able to continue to follow that path. But in the fog of political crisis, there is little evidence that anything as revolutionary as economic reform is being thought about. As usual in Pakistani politics, the aim seems to be limited to staying in office until voted out, which is, of course, quite likely if the record of accomplishment is little beyond having stayed in power for the full term. That would have the two main parties on an equal basis as far as accomplishment goes. What then?
I want to come back to the elephant in the room. I am sure the army would say it supported the political and economic reforms outlined in the discussion above. And yet, these reforms also imply “normalization” of two kinds that involve the army — normalization of relations with an India rapidly emerging onto the world stage, and normalization of civil-military relations in Pakistan. One cannot happen without the other. Clearly, at some level, the army understands this connection and clings tenaciously to its view that India remains the existential enemy, so as to block any progress in the civil-military balance (which appears to be tipping toward the military because of the Panama Paper crisis). As Talbot says toward the end of his excellent book, reforms in one area “are likely to improve reform prospects in another”. There would be a domino effect. And if reform strengthens the state, it increases the legitimacy of civilian governments and decreases the leverage of the army. How is it that a government headed by a politician who clearly desires civilian control of the military has missed this point?
The author is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC and a former US diplomat who was Ambassador to Pakistan and Bangladesh, and Chief of Mission in Liberia