Democracy came after long struggle against a dictatorial rule of Pervez Musharraf. Civil society, especially media, supported by teachers, students, workers, peasants and other professional classes of society, played a critical role. Pervez Musharraf was an imperial dictator, with the full backing of the US but he could not withstand the popular pressure of masses and finally his rule crumbled down as a result of the mass movement in 2008.
Needless to say political parties are the life and blood of democracy. They play bigger and critical role to consolidate the gains of democracy by utilising democratic capital for the benefit and development of society. Democracy gives people choices and improves their lives. But unfortunately, in our country, things are taken for granted by the political parties and instead of working for the betterment of people they indulge in pettifogging. As a result, today the country is in the throes of serious crises, public enterprises are on the verge of collapse. Railway, PIA, Pakistan Steel are few glaring examples. The total deficit being incurred by public enterprises is Rs 400 billion which is hefty amount keeping in view the economic plight of the country which is running on IMF loans. People are not paying taxes. There are 2.7 million registered tax payers, out of which hardly 1.5 million are paying taxes, and interestingly out of 1.5 million, 90% are salaried class people.
Due to carelessness on the part of government the Nation is facing serious energy crisis. People don't have gas and electricity in their houses. Industries are being shut down and people are losing their jobs. It is bound to give rise to unprecedented social and political tension. When present democratic government took over, it would have given top priority to energy sector but it did not, and we saw Ministers kept making false promises about the resolutions of energy crisis at the earliest but it was mere rhetoric.
No doubt the Pakistan's political society played critical role in the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Political parties had to learn lessons from the past experience and would have focused on raising solid democratic façade. They would have worked to build economic institutions to make policies free from unwarranted political intervention. There are no effective economic policies to tackle the issue of budget deficit, inflations, unemployment and rising level of poverty. Today around 82.7 million people are living below the poverty line and nothing is being done for the betterment of common people. Instead of working to deepen the democracy and provide people economic and social justice, political parties are fighting with each other and that infighting is posing threat to weak sapling of democracy.
In democracy, political parties respect each other's mandate and allow difference of opinion. But it is ironic to note that in our country the democratic mandate is not honoured and political parties, winning the majority vote, are not allowed to complete their terms. We saw this happening in the 1990s when duly elected governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were sacked on grounds of bad governance, corruption, misuse of power etc. I always argue that democracy is not a problem of this country but management of democracy is the problem, due to which democracy does not take its roots.