Of Democracy and the lack of it…

This issue has been disturbing me for long, and I, like most others had been listening to various debates and discussions about democracy, dictators, political madness and ill will.

First of all, my basic views on this:
Government should ideally, always be with the consensus of the majority.  I use this term because it does not necessarily mean democratic, but doesn\’t almost always mean dictatorship either. These terms are relative. They change with time and circumstances.

In 1998, in a bloodless coup, a military officer took over the country. Whether with the blessings of the supreme court or not is irrelevant here. He violated the constitution of the time but was approved under \”doctrine of necessity\”. Whatever that means. HOWEVER, he was at that point of time, indirectly, representing the will of millions of people who looked to him with hope in their eyes.

Like our elected governments, he too made errors in his last 2/3 years which lead to a decline in his popularity. He broke some rules too.

Fast forward to the elections in 2008, a government was elected with a so called majority. I don\’t realize why elected equated to democracy. We know how \”transparent\” our election process is…hence how \”democratic\” as well.

In the last two years of an elected government, we have seen the state of affairs go from bad to worse. Taxation is crossing crazy levels, power issues remain unresolved (actually getting worse), state institutions being used to \”employ\” political party workers, fired beauracratic officers being re-appointed with over 8 years in salaries, perks and bonuses compounded with market rate interest. So called \”income support plans\” and what not. An insane love affair with rental power, instead of jump starting the coal plans in interior sindh. No jump starts in gas import plans from Iran. Nothing. Barely any economic improvement, highest debt accumulation ever in a 2 year time frame. highest power tarriffs in the world, higher than ever corruption levels.

Is this what  we have elected/voted for? for God\’s sake….there was one filter to make sure some degree of educated people come to power. But that was removed too. Why? The parliament is the law giving body of the country. Is it not prudent to have it run by companies who have the capacity to understand law and economics?

Now we have a parliament filled with people carrying fake degrees, but what is the election commission doing about it? False information in nomination papers makes the entire nomination process void ab-initio, hence the candidate is to be automatically stripped of office. Which is very much like the election of our beloved president. The NRO has lapsed and he had graft cases against him. His election, therefore, was void ab initio.

Why does the government need 5 years to do good? Why cant good stuff start in the first two? The dictator started reforms immediately didnt he?

What concerns me even more, that the so called dictator did greater things to improve the reputation and condition of the country than the democrats did.

The world generally tends to hate dictators because they disregard the will and state of the people and only do as they wish. Hating dictators is subjective too, because as long as the world knows a dictator can help them, they dont mind dealing with one.

This particular dictator continued ruling for 10 years, and barely any of his actions can be seen as those that harmed the common man.

Please dont say that people were affected by the judicial crisis crap, if a so called \”free judiciary\” mattered to people, its been restored now…and what has it done for the people? The number of pending cases  in the criminal cases would have been addressed, the political cases wouldnt take so long and credible action would have been taken instead of the CJ and company just being quoted in the papers making statements.

We are living in a banana republic. If we as a people vote for someone, that does not mean that we have signed off our destiny to the same person for 5 years. We should have the right to withdraw our support too.

You know whats most ironic? A Dictator had the honour of setting the standards for public service and sincerity to the nation, and the democrats are falling short.

wow.