MANY of us, who come from very different
backgrounds - academics, analysts, activists,
citizens - argued over the course of October and
November last year that civil society actors and
political parties ought to boycott the elections
which were announced by Gen Pervez Musharraf, and
which were eventually held on Feb 18.

It was clear that once the term of the Shaukat
Aziz government came to an end, elections would
be held to elect a new parliament.

In the closing months of last year, political
groupings like the All Parties Democratic
Movement and the Pakistan Muslim League-N
announced that they would not contest the polls,
primarily because they felt that the elections
would be neither free nor fair, and nor were
these parties willing to accept any rules of the
game announced by the uniformed general-president.

The efficacy of the decision depended much on
whether the Pakistan People’s Party would also
come on board and hence give some credence to the
boycott call. Many were sceptical that if either
of the two largest parties chose to participate
in the elections, they would gain legitimacy and
those who boycotted would be left out of the
political process.

Eventually, both the two largest parties agreed
to contest an election which resulted in a
resounding victory for the anti-Musharraf
political forces and put Pakistan on the way to a
military-free democratic future. Today, we can
all celebrate the democratic process and look
back and say that the decision to contest was the
best decision that political parties could have
taken.

Two weeks into the swearing-in of the new
parliament, it seems that almost all the fears
and concerns that the boycotters were allaying
have been proven to be wrong. The judges are
free, and are likely to be reinstated, and
President Musharraf just might be pressurised
into make some sort of hurried exit. The script
could not have been written any better and
democracy seems to have triumphed over all other
forms of politics.

Having said this, it would be naïve to think that
the parties are taking these steps in a vacuum.
There is no ignoring the momentum and
uncompromised push for these demands coming
consistently from the lawyers’ movement, civil
society and perhaps within the parties too. In
fact, rather than waiting detachedly for some
unproven exercise of sovereignty from parliament,
the people chose to actively vote out the
government and then exerted continued political
pressure for their demands to be met.

It is only a small section of those we call the
’apologists’ within and outside the political
parties who seek to dilute principles and
encourage leaders to backtrack on promises for
their personal gain, and who call democratic
pressure a ’confrontation’.

Those of us who were in favour of the election
boycott were under no illusions that we were
anywhere near a revolutionary situation similar
to France in 1789, or even 1968, but felt that a
boycott by the main political actors would put
enough pressure on the Musharraf government where
it would have to back down and make major
concessions. The lawyers’ movement was still
vibrant, and the Nov 3 martial law and the
playing with the constitution under the PCO
energised and united diverse sections of civil
society and political actors as well.

We were confident that had the PPP joined the
lawyers’ struggle and been more active in its
anti-Musharraf politics rather than indulging in
deals, perhaps the general may have been forced
out earlier. The boycott decision was based on a
reading of the limited strength of the street,
and had the two largest parties participated we
could have been near an Indonesia- or
Philippines-like situation where political power
overthrew authoritarianism.

We will never know what would have happened if
both the PPP and the PML-N had agreed in November
2007 to work together to boycott the polls. If
agreements and a workable coalition can be formed
after the election, a more uncertain and unstable
agreement could have been possible in agreeing to
boycott. However, we will never know.

While the boycott decision may have become far
less important as the numbers who supported the
move dwindled, and more and more political actors
and civil society representatives decided to
contest or support the elections, if nothing else
the boycott issue did raise the level of debate
and exchange in the political public arena.

While there was a complete consensus in
condemning the martial law imposed on Nov 3, and
there was continued support for the lawyers’
movement with the reinstatement of the judges a
real demand, the divisions amongst those who were
in favour of boycotting the elections and those
who supported participation raised the level of
discourse in the Urdu and English press manifold.
There was a lively debate not seen since the time
of the 1999 coup - and even that was rather
one-sided, in favour of the coup. The op-ed pages
of all major newspapers had raised the level of
debate and argumentation to a lively level not
seen in many years. The otherwise dry and staid
political public sphere had come alive.

This taste for political debate acquired by the
media has also been simultaneously attributed to
Gen Musharraf’s personal largesse and equally
dismissed as cacophonic laundry washing by the
elite. The point of democratic choices and
transparency, as articulated by the fourth
estate, needs to be dealt with carefully now on.
There should be no calls for going soft on the
new parliament simply because it is nebulous in
its formation. The democratic role of the media
must by definition be challenging and expository
rather than conciliatory and uncritical.

Many of us who supported the boycott decision are
now happy to have been proven wrong, and support
the larger democratic process to further
strengthen and deepen both democracy and civil
society. We recognise, however, the role of the
movements which helped bring about this new
democratisation in Pakistan beyond electoral
politics. We hope that the processes under way
and the promises made will move towards a further
fruition of democracy with the reinstatement of
the pre-Nov 3 judiciary and with the removal of
the former general-president who was resoundingly
defeated in the Feb 18 elections.

Those who argued for the elections boycott now
need to organise themselves democratically to
fulfil the unfinished agenda of democratisation
in Pakistan and to ensure that these tasks are
accomplished. Clearly, democracy has to be taken
far further than before and needs to be
strengthened. If parliament is to be sovereign -
the new mantra of the elected representatives -
the role of those outside the assembly has to be
one which ensures that parliamentarians
accomplish their democratic mandate.

And if they don’t state or tackle the peoples’
issues due to fear of being de-tracked, then it
is our work to set the agenda for them - on
behalf of the electorate, not the elected. While
happy to have been proven wrong over the boycott
decision, we would hate to turn around a hundred
days later to say, ’we told you so’.