Cirque du Democracy | Bushra Zaidi

Apr 2013

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Several excellent op-eds on this can be found here, here and here. Zia’s laws have persisted in the Constitution via Article 62, namely ones requiring candidates to have an adequate knowledge of Islamic teachings and abstention from major sins. This was surely a bit of a surprise to most people who thought politicians were expected to make policies, build roads and agree on taxes. As senior editor of The Herald Badar Alam puts it, it’s as if we now expect our political class to not just deliver on policies and roads and sewers but also to deliver us into jannat.

But leave it former President General (R) Musharraf to show us how it’s really done. Enough with these vague proxies of ethical behavior, let’s get some serious neo-liberal values in here! In Zia’s 1985 election 30 out of 1333 candidates were rejected. In 2002, a full 12.6% of the hopeful candidates (over 200 of them) weren’t deemed good enough to appeal to voters. Defaulting on your loan, failing to pay taxes or utility bills, all make you unfit to attempt getting a few seats in the assemblies. In 2002, the logic was simple. Politicians are corrupt. Pakistan suffers from corruption. Let’s boot out some corrupt politicians, and watch as decades of institutionalized, multi-sector patronage and rent-seeking disappear overnight.

(It didn’t).

Of course the piece de resistance of Mushrraf’s regime, the masterpiece of military art reflecting societal paranoia, was deeming it necessary that all provincial and national assembly candidates hold Bachelor’s degrees. What better way of articulating the fear of an educated minority being ruled by an illiterate, uneducated majority? To give some context, 58% of Pakistan’s population will never go to school. Post-secondary enrollment is less than one percent. If everyone followed Musharraf’s 2002 Election Ordinance law honestly and to the letter, it would be illegal for 99.9% of the population to represent itself.

(For the sake of comparison, in apartheid South Africa, the 19% white population was allowed exclusive rights to represent the Black, Asian and colored majority).

Thankfully we are rid of the education requirement. We are only cracking down on individuals who dared to defy a law that we’ve already declared was undemocratic.

Let us then conclude that the fault is with democracy itself. Democracy is unfortunately a varied and messy process. It has at times given rise to corruption, fascism, authoritarianism and other thoroughly un-democratic models. But attempting to control and purge it has led to even worse–brutal dictatorships, one-party rule, and religious intolerance. It is probably a good idea that in most functioning democracies, there are some criteria for running for office. For example, in the world’s most powerful democracy, the constitution has this to say about eligibility requirements for serving as President of the United States of America:


That’s it.

Closer to home, India requires a candidate for the Lok Sabha to be a citizen of the country, 25 years of age or older, mentally sound, not be bankrupt and not be criminally convicted. Which requires more than just an allegation of water theft, or claiming someone’s op-ed exposes them as morally bankrupt. What India and America do have is extensive Right to Information laws, requirements of full disclosure for candidates, and most importantly, extremely harsh sanctions on anyone attempting to buy, bribe or pressure voters. It is by no means a perfect system. But it tends to err on the side that politics, and democracy, is a self-regulating system.

Which it is.

Bushra Zaidi is a pseudonym.

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