A collapsing system.
Byline: Dr Niaz Murtaza
THE gods of fate have a wicked sense of humor. When they want to destroy someone, they make their dreams come true but soon turn them into nightmares. This is now happening to those who have long shaped Pakistan's destiny. The political system devised in 2018 is collapsing, with failing governance, rising dissent and court verdicts against them.
The elite political bargain that has long ruled Pakistan to marginalise its masses has included three state actors (military, judiciary and bureaucracy) and three societal ones (business, the landed elites and the professional middle class). The lords of the system have ruled directly for long periods, giving superficial economic and political progress but prolonged violence. They have controlled governance covertly even in between via civilian facades.
Elite ruling systems aim to maximise elite wealth and keep masses docile. But they go through cycles. Direct rule by the lords maximises elite wealth but increases societal dissent among excluded elites and masses. The system then reincorporates excluded business and landed elites who control masses via patronage. But as the cost of sharing increases and dissent decreases, political elites are expelled by the lords. The Musharraf era saw system contraction, followed by the 2008-18 era of reincorporation of political elites and then system re-contraction.
Huge stresses have often toppled elite systems globally.
This current contraction has been along three axes. The first is ethnic which started in 2008. After the '71 debacle caused by exclusion of Bengalis, space was given to other ethnicities even though Punjab now had an electoral majority. The PPP often got a majority from the smaller provinces and south Punjab under a non-Punjab prime minister. This outcome is now unlikely and all elected prime ministers since 2008 have been from Punjab, as have been army chiefs. The two biggest parties and their senior leader are mostly from Punjab. Both parties are also conservative. Thus, the second axis of exclusion has been ideological.
The third axis is class-based. The military, judiciary, bureaucracy and private middle classes have long bristled at the brashly crude ways of business and landed elites. But it appears that they still had to be periodically included given their control of the masses via patronage politics.
In 2018, middle-class minds devised a plan to finally eject them through an allegedly rigged majority for the...
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