EVERY decade in Pakistan’s history has seen a moment when a robust defence of democracy as the best form of government for a country like ours is needed. The never-ending struggle for supremacy between the democratic and non-democratic forces make it necessary. One of the key ways in which non-democratic forces advance their argument is to amplify all the bad things that happen under democratic rule, and all the flaws that democratically elected leaders bring to their position. They advance the idea that a more selfless leadership will be better for the country since it will put the national interest above its own. This is the central argument which numerous non-democratic forces have used to try and justify their intervention in politics and governance.

But there is a flaw in this premise. No leadership is selfless. Not in the political arena. Every contender for leadership emerges only by harnessing the powers inherent in society. Non-democrats, for example, have had the organised power of their respective institution behind them. And therefore, they have not been able to operate outside the limits set by their own affiliation with the institution that supplied them with the power to rule and to attack other institutions — which cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be seen as selfless actions taken for the sake of the country.

In fact, to use the words of Hamilton in the Federalist Papers — the founding documents of the American system........

© Dawn