Civil Society in Pakistan

by SAMSON SIMON SHARAF

Pakistan’s political establishment is back to its old ways of self-preservation, aggrandisement and nepotism. What makes the present malaise different from the 80s and 90s is that all the major political parties are in power with stakes in the system. The architects of the elections in 2008 had drawn a crude power sharing formula that supports back-scratching and keeps them in denial.
As witnessed in Karachi, the political showdown continues through political statements and unleashing of proxies with complete disregard to the value of life and property. The coalition heavyweights continue to trample grass whichever way they interact. The time is not far when the political anarchy thus orchestrated will overshadow the rule of law and eclipses the notion of an independent judiciary and good governance. In the endgame, the beneficiaries of NRO and loan write offs will go unchecked and the power of Zardari’s people will be vindicated.
History of Pakistan is replete with examples that this Trojan of a mindset described in my previous essay, has the insatiable capability to permeate and control any movement. The present crises manifest how a vibrant movement of fundamental rights and justice led by the civil society has been manipulated by political forces of their own ends. The power of black coats has slowly degenerated into a symbol of power that does not respect law. Will the civil society of Pakistan resign itself to the fold of the 60% silent masses to doom the country and its people; or is it time for it to rise once again to fill a vacuum for positive change?
But what is this Civil Society? It appears as a loose term to describe activities outside the ambit of the state machinery. The Pakistani media has confined it to describe the non-governmental reaction led by lawyers to the sacking of the Chief Justice of Pakistan. President Zardari, however, refers to it as political jokers.
For philosophers like George Hegel and the revolutionary theorist Karl Marx, civil society was an inclusive concept of ‘society minus the state’. The philosophers and political scientists of the enlightenment opine that origins of the concept of civil society lie in key phases of modernity wherein philosophy and political economy began to distinguish systematically between the spheres of state and society. In the twentieth century, the development of civil society is seen as a significant criterion of the development of democracy. The fact that no two social scientists agree on a common definition reflects the reality that in each culture, civil society is a reflection of the traditions, conventions and codes of behaviour outside the legal hierarchal structure of the state.