Everyday, on the streets of Pakistan’s cities, life comes to a grinding halt as the entourages of the powerful leisurely move from point A to point B. Traffic lights and traffic jams are things only meant to be experienced by lesser mortals, with the anointed few, drunk with self-importance and entitlement, displaying nothing but a callous contempt for the time and lives of the people who they are ostensibly meant to serve. Given the daily rituals of humiliation most citizens experience at the hands of their elected representatives and public servants, it is not surprising to see that some of them finally snapped when they refused to let Senator Rehman Malik board a plane that had allegedly been delayed on his behalf. A similar dynamic was at work earlier this week when a public outcry over the purchase of a Mercedes car for the Attorney General of Pakistan led him to withdraw his request for such an extravagant official vehicle.
While easy to understand the feelings that gave rise to these very public articulations of popular frustration with the ruling elite, it is important to not overstate their significance. After all, the occasional poke in the eye administered to errant politicians does little to alter the institutional underpinnings of Pakistan’s so-called VIP culture, and maintaining an exclusive focus on the peccadilloes of particular individuals shifts attention away from the need to address the systemic inequality and corruption that permeates public life in Pakistan. Indeed, widespread disillusionment with politicians is hardly unique to Pakistan; in the United States, the partisan bickering and polarization within Congress has led to that body enjoying historically low approval ratings, and the mood in the United Kingdom is similar, with the expenses scandal of 2009 demonstrating the venality of the country’s elected representatives. Closer to home, corruption scandals are a regular feature of political life in India and Bangladesh, contributing to a general sense that politics is intrinsically tainted, and that all politicians are unworthy of support.
Across the world, disenchantment with the political elite has, paradoxically enough, given rise to a form of ‘anti-politics’ that essentially throws the baby out with the bathwater. Rather than fostering a more substantive engagement with the political process, with a view towards reforming it for the better, distaste for politics and its practitioners has either led to outright disengagement, fuelled by the belief that nothing can change, or a surge in support for anti-establishment forces, not all of which are democratic or progressive. The Tea Party in the United States, the UK Independence Party, the Front National in France, Jobbik in Hungary, and the AAP in India are just some of the beneficiaries of popular opposition to mainstream politics. Yet, beyond mouthing empty platitudes against the political elite, these parties, and others like them offer little in the way of actual, workable agendas for change. Instead, more often than not, their political agendas are nothing more than old-fashioned Fascism (particularly in the case of the European Far-Right), reheated conservatism, and woolly left-liberalism, all of which make for great populist slogans but rarely go beyond a superficial analysis of the crises of politics in the contemporary world.
Pakistan is a case in point. When berating VIP culture, many observers blame individual politicians while failing to see how the entire institutional structure of Pakistani politics is geared towards facilitating nepotism and rent-seeking. Public office in Pakistan has always been seen as a means through which to pursue private gain, a fact that has undoubtedly been reinforced by the granting of government jobs as a reward for services rendered to the ruling elite, and the lack of effective accountability mechanisms through which to check abuses of power. While delayed flights and stalled traffic are perhaps more visible symbols of the sense of entitlement possessed by the powerful, they are symptomatic of the same underlying issues that have made sifarish and bribery an inherent part of everyday politics in Pakistan. From the lowest level government functionary to the highest tiers of political power, those with even an iota of authority relentlessly engage in actions that make a mockery of the rules that are supposed to govern their conduct. More importantly, whether they like to admit it or not, many of the same citizens who rightly criticize this behaviour also benefit from it; when making use of their contacts to get things done, or when asking friends in government to provide them with preferential treatment, they are essentially perpetuating the problems with the system.
It should be clear that in this context, while it is easy and not entirely wrong to blame individuals for their transgressions, any lasting solution to these problems is one that recognizes the need to question not just the political system as a whole, but also the economic and social factors that facilitate its continued existence. Lambasting politicians for corruption makes little sense in Pakistan unless it is accompanied by a recognition of how the institutions of the state, and the way in which they function at every level, need to be reconfigured to deliver more effective governance. While it is easy to castigate the ruling clique for their material excesses, it serves little purpose sans a critique of the way in which capitalism has created and reinforced the stark inequality and poverty that is endemic to Pakistan. Blaming the current democratic dispensation for all of the country’s ills may make sense, but only if such an approach also demonstrates an understanding of how the military establishment and other actors have historically worked to undermine the system.
In short, rather than resorting to knee-jerk, reactionary responses to the obvious problems that confront Pakistan, it is necessary to engage in a deeper and more critical form of politics that takes a wider view of the issues the country currently faces. Empty sloganeering and the simple expression of dislike for select politicians is no substitute for a political programme, and the ideologically barren politics of self-appointed custodians of freedom in Pakistan offers nothing more than the illusion of change. At a time when mainstream politics has seemingly failed across the world, there is, paradoxically enough, a need for more politics, not less. Disillusionment and disengagement should not give way to hollow rage directed at easy but ultimately irrelevant targets, and should instead serve as a basis upon which to ask the more difficult and demanding questions that will need to be answered if substantive change is to be achieved.

The writer is an assistant professor of political science at LUMS.