Let us privatise democracy
Greater priority should have been given in Pakistan to the “privatising” of democracy than to the process of privatisation of industry and commerce. No segment of the government is really under the control of democratically elected individuals, except maybe at the Prime Minister’s level and that too only in those parts that are so designated by our real rulers, the bureaucracy. The Chief Ministers and the various functionaries downwards are quite happy exercising the limits of their responsibility by allocating plots and rural lands and even these are so designated by our bureaucratic rulers. In order to progress, we must denationalise and decentralize democracy from the grassroots level upwards, otherwise the fact of power being in the hands of the people, the primary raison d’etre for democracy, is a continuing farce with which we are happily fooling ourselves.
Power is firmly in the hands of those who control the purse strings of the public exchequer, i.e. the bureaucrats who judge how the money has to be spent, subsequently allocate it and then mis-spend the same without fear of accountability. At the level of the Union, Municipality or further upwards, is there any elected politician who is free of a Controller in the form of some bureaucrat or the other? While Auditors must certainly be designated to ensure that our politicians do not spend all the money in the public exchequer on Pajeros and Nissan Patrol vehicles, the authority for financial sanctions (and the disbursement thereof) must be totally vested in the elected representatives in exclusion of bureaucratic interference. The public being painfully aware that their representatives they elect are mere window-dressing and have no fiscal authority, the mass psychology will continue to accept bureaucrats as the real rulers. Democracy will as such continue to remain a sham unless we take the power of sanctioning funds away from bureaucracy and give it to those elected by the people. Only by the genuine “privatising” of democracy can we expect that the aspirations of the people of this country will be assuaged.
Using the psychological authority of Operation Clean-up in Sindh, we have a superb chance to create a model for the whole country for actually transferring power from selected officials to the elected representatives of the people. Unless we can correct the anomalies in the concept of the type of democracy that is presently in operation in Pakistan, this will remain an exercise in self-delusion, to the continuing detriment of our poor, suffering masses.
To ensure that electoral power has a wide base, every effort must be made to ensure that almost every person in every constituency has some representation on the “Corporate Boards” of the basic unit, i.e. Precinct (or Thana), which should have around 50,000 people. While we may not follow the model of a corporate structure, i.e. having a pro-rata equation between the number of shares and the Directors, we can approximate the idea by electing a slate of representatives instead of following the present practice of electing one candidate having a simple majority only. A survey of election pattern shows that because of the division/distribution of votes a person getting only 22% of the votes (or even less) can get elected, in effect disenfranchising 78% of the balance of the electorate till the next elections. An elected slate of 15 candidates per constituency (i.e. the first 15 getting the maximum votes in priority) will ensure that almost everyone in a constituency has someone to represent his/her interests. A second run-off election can clearly determine the voters preference in priority.
Those in the slate getting the maximum number of votes have an option to go upto the next higher level i.e. the Union or District Council, three to the Union, two to the District, thus leaving a “Corporate Board” of 10 at the Thana level, with a run-off election on adult franchise at each level, Union or District, to decide upon the respective Chairmanship. While this may be an expensive exercise, it is much cheaper than going through political crisis every few years. To ensure that the elected representatives have a say in the development work of their constituencies, bureaucrats should only be entrusted with auditing the accounts. Taxation should also be decentralized to the Thana level with a direct relationship between the collecting of revenues and expenditures. With taxation decentralized to the grassroots level, there will be that much less leakage of revenues.
There is need to reform our system pragmatically, to give democracy the desired and logical conclusion of mass aspirations. If we do not allow the masses to exercise their God-given prerogatives, then democracy will always be susceptible to public sector manipulation, thus negating the concept of democracy. Our people desperately need economic emancipation, the first step involves the privatising of democracy.
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