Perils and promise of democracy – Pakistan

On Jan 31, 2025

AS political scientist Adam Przeworski said, “Democracy is a system in which parties lose elections.”

Loss in elections is but a part of the democratic process. The losers accept defeat and then work towards winning the next elections. We recently saw a peaceful transfer of power in the US, when Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th US president.

Earlier, he had failed to concede defeat to Joe Biden in his 2020 re-election bid. His supporters had even attacked the Capitol where Congress was meeting on Jan 6, 2021, to endorse the victory of the challenger over the then president. Trump refused to attend Biden’s 2021 inauguration. This time, the losers displayed grace in defeat: both president Biden and the defeated vice president Kamala Harris sat through the victor’s humiliating tirade with dignity.

The Republican president denounced the outgoing Democrat’s record as a “betrayal” of Americans by a “radical and corrupt establishment”. The veteran of 52 years in politics smiled in disbelief as Trump declared, “From this moment on, America’s decline is over.”

When mainstream politicians adopt the expedient path of semi-loyalty, anti-democratic forces are strengthened. </blockquote> Political scientist Juan Linz calls those who are committed to democracy “loyal democrats”. They respect the outcome of free and fair elections, whatever it may be, and shun violence to achieve political goals, as opposed to those who openly support military coups or deploy thugs or militias to browbeat opponents or intimidate voters. There is another category of politicians who act as accomplices to “democracy’s assassins”; they are what Linz calls the “semi-loyal” species who appear to abide by democratic principles, while quietly assaulting them and turning a blind eye to oppression and persecution. They enable authoritarianism and are tucked away in the hallways of power. When mainstream politicians adopt the expedient path of semi-loyalty, anti-democratic forces are strengthened, resulting in the collapse of democracy. Pakistan’s dilemma is an abundance of semi-loyalists, self-centred leaders of the mainstream political parties, which have been in and out of power due to the machinations of the military establishment and the deep state. The leadership of the mainstream political parties in Pakistan have paid a heavy price by aligning themselves with unelected, undemocratic forces; those who defied the deep state for the sake of civilian supremacy were made a horrible example of. A leader of a liberal and progressive <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1877839">political party</a> was sent to the gallows and his daughter, who led the party after him, was assassinated. The party’s current leadership has abandoned the founder’s vision. <figure class="media sm:w-1/2 w-full media--right media--embed media--uneven"> <iframe class="nk-iframe" onload="setInterval(()=>{try{this.style.height=this.contentWindow.document.body.scrollHeight+’px’;}catch{}}, 100)” width=”100%” frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” style=”height:250px;position:relative” src=”https://www.dawn.com/news/card/1880737″ sandbox=”allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups allow-modals allow-forms”

Then a family of traders in Lahore was propped up and groomed in the establishment’s foundry in the 1980s and 1990s. Both political dynasties took turns in power but invariably ended up annoying those pulling the strings; the latter then betted on a new horse. The charisma and leadership traits of the sports hero, who had been lost for over two decades in the political wilderness, finally came in handy and he took on the…

Perils and promise of democracy – Pakistan

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