Pakistan's Political Parties: Cult Followings or Grassroots Groups

By Dr. Ghulam M. Haniff

Political parties in Pakistan seem to sprout up almost overnight. Hardly a month goes by without someone announcing the formation of a new political organization to compete for votes in the public arena. Numerous ambitious individuals, Prime Minister wannabes, have launched their political parties simply by making a declaration.

Pakistani parties, whether major or minor ones, are highly personal affairs. They revolve around an individual who is accepted as the leader and a potential Prime Minister. The leader handpicks his supporters who in turn bestow on him the title of the chairperson or the president.

A democratic political system relies on political parties for the selection of personnel to run the government. Parties are convenient mechanisms linking citizens at the grassroots with the government in the national capital. They are also the means for providing inputs into the policy making process.

Generally speaking, in mature democracies parties are broadly based appealing to the largest cross-section of the electoral. Parties want to win as many votes as possible so they will have broad support for forming the government and for making public policies.

Almost in all democratic countries parties are democratically organized and are made up of citizens selected through competitive elections. Membership in every committee and body is determined through elections. All of the party officers are elected sometimes through intense competition. The parties are organized upwardly from the grassroots at the local level.

In Pakistan such parties do not exist. The usual pattern there is to create a party from the top downwards largely by designating selected individuals to run the organization at various levels. The power of control rests squarely in the hands of the leader.

Together with the declared leader a select cadre makes up the leadership of the organization who see to it that the party workers and supporters are personally loyal to the individual at the top. The leader is like a general in the army controlling the organization through chain of commands.

The analogy of the godfather, in the sense of the mafia criminal syndicate, has often been used to refer to leaders of the Pakistani political parties. In this context the party is seen as made up of a bunch of thugs, who intimidate voters at the polls, and once part of the government, loot the national treasury.

The parties, of course, have engaged in a lot of criminal activities ranging from threats to kidnappings to murder. Allegations of drug trafficking exist as well. In the parties there is a ready network, with loyal and willing individuals, to carry out just about any type of assignment, however unpleasant.

Parties are also described as forming the personality cult of the leader. Followers extol the virtues of the individual at the top. Often the person is given extraordinary titles, as in the case of Benazir Bhutto who was made the president for life of the PPP. This type of a transparent subterfuge would be a big joke in any seriously democratic country.

The internal structure of the eighteen political parties who make up the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy is virtually the same. Each one revolves around an individual as the supreme leader. The control of the party is totally in the hands of that one individual. Loyalty is expected and received from the party workers and supporters.

Though not strictly comparable this pattern of leadership was exercised by Nawaz Sharif as the president of the PML, and presently by Benazir of the PPP, Imran Khan of Tehrik-I-Insaf, Altaf Hussain of the MQM and others, too numerous to mention.

Besides the eighteen who want democracy restored, numerous other political parties exist, perhaps in excess of fifty if one were to compile a list. They represent every conceivable type of parochial interest imaginable, varying from regional to linguistic, ethnic, religious, sectarian, class, economic and occupational appeal.

Owing to the probability of certain defeat, and divisiveness in the society, organizing parties on narrow interests is usually looked upon with disfavor in most democracies. But in Pakistan there is no such concern. Opportunistic individuals, politically ambitious, want only to become leaders at any cost. What consequence their actions may have for the larger society is seen as irrelevant to their goals.

This has made political arena resemble a three-ring circus. Unfortunately, it has brought a lot of social turmoil and political instability as well.

The call for the restoration of democracy by parties such as the PPP and the PML is laughable. How can these organizations implement democracy in the country when they themselves do not practice democracy internally?

The failure of democracy in Pakistan is due largely to the fact that its crucial voluntary institutions, the parties, have not become democratic. The successful implementation of democracy in a country requires political parties, as the basic political institution for the selection of governmental personnel, be democratically organized