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TERMING the current system as a sham democracy, Dr Tahirul Qadri has promised genuine democracy in Pakistan through a revolution. Given his impressive religious credentials, one is thankful to him for championing democracy vociferously, for some religious leaders out-rightly reject democracy. One also agrees with his critiques of current Pakistani democracy and his desire for a better democracy. However, one disagrees with his preferred method, ie, revolution.

Before jumping into the discussion, it is appropriate to follow French philosopher Voltaires advice, who famously said, If you wish to converse with me, define your terms [concepts]. Blending popular desires with academic definitions, one can say that genuine democracy is when elections are regular and credible; corruption is low; government services are high-quality; people feel secure and rights are respected.

If one reviews all events generally branded as revolutions, three features emerge. Firstly, revolutions refer to fundamental changes in political and/or economic systems, ie, from monarchy to democracy or capitalism to communism.

Secondly, they are led by people outside current power structures. Thus, palace and military coups are excluded.

Thirdly, these outsiders use extra-legal measures, eg, war or demonstrations, to achieve change since current legal structures disallow peaceful change efforts.

It is debatable whether one should call it a revolution if outsiders topple the elected Sharif government through demonstrations and instal another elected government since there would be no structural change in the political system; at most a more competent elected government would replace a less competent one.

More fundamental is the issue of what revolutions have achieved globally, for there is not one revolution which delivered enormously improved governance immediately. Take the highly celebrated 18th-century American and French revolutions. All they achieved was to replace monarchies by highly imperfect democracies no better or even worse than Pakistans today. It was decades later by the middle of the 20th century that governance reached the high levels prevalent today.

Consider next the Arab Spring revolutions. Governance quality has either deteriorated or stayed unchanged. Ethiopias 1970s revolution which toppled Emperor Selassie actually produced massively worse governance.

The 1948 Chinese revolution created mixed results, with land reforms combined with starvation, death and repression. It was only after Deng Xiaopings 1978 peaceful ascension that China started its development spree.

Iran certainly has independent foreign policies since its 1979 revolution but its actual governance is no better than Pakistans. It lags behind Pakistan on the Transparency corruption index and on many sub-dimensions of the World Bank Governance index. Moreover, there is more openness and freedom in Pakistan.

The rest is here:
Genuine democracy - Newspaper - DAWN.COM