Politics of ‘deal-making’

THE reported Benazir Bhutto-Pervez Musharraf meeting in Abu Dhabi has proved to be a bombshell and unleashed a storm of feverish comments and speculations. The most common opinion among the opposition and sections of civil society is that the PPP chairperson has made a deal with a military dictator; the deal being defined – explicitly by many – as compromising principles and interests of the people and the country for the sake of personal political gains and power.

The PML-N is calling it a betrayal of the Charter of Democracy, signed by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif in May this year. The relevant clause in the Charter states: “We shall not join a military regime or any military sponsored government. No party shall solicit the support of [the] military to come into power or to dislodge a democratic government.” Their reference is apparently to the part that states that no party shall solicit the support of the military to come into power. The MMA too is attempting to use the opportunity to transfer the mantle of being the military’s B-team onto the PPP.

The import of the reported Abu Dhabi meeting requires that the still unfolding events be analysed somewhat dispassionately. Reports regarding negotiations have been confirmed by Benazir Bhutto herself. That part is, thus, no longer in dispute. What remains contentious, however, is whether negotiations should have been held at all. However, the charges against the PPP go further. There is the not-so-implicit inference that a deal has been struck and, more so, that the deal amounts to the PPP forming a government under General Musharraf.

To be fair to the PPP, however, there is no evidence that Benazir Bhutto is soliciting the support of the military to come into power. There are three stages to a successful deal – negotiations, agreement, power sharing – and there is no evidence beyond stage one. Rather, Benazir Bhutto has been consistent in her demand that General Musharraf will have to shed his uniform before being considered for reelection to the presidency. The charges of a betrayal of the Charter of Democracy, thus, do not hold. The charge of acquiring the B-team mantle is nonsensical.

In any case, MMA’s record of insidious collaboration with the military and military intelligence agencies, from the erstwhile East Pakistan days in 1971 to Afghanistan in the 1980s, is too blood-soaked to enable it to ever shed its notoriety as the military’s B-team.

However, assuming that a deal for power-sharing is under negotiation, General Musharraf is as much an accomplice as Benazir Bhutto; – unless it is assumed that the general remains all-powerful and the PPP has been weakened to a point where Benazir Bhutto is willing to accept a share in power under the tutelage of a military dictator. That is not the case; rather it is the other way round. General Musharraf is fatally wounded – politically – and is frantically trying to reach out to those who can salvage him.

In fact, if reports are correct, it is General Musharraf who – after continually heaping scorn on Benazir Bhutto for eight years – has had to eat his humble pie and call upon her at her home-in-exile in the UAE.

Two questions arise. The first question is: if General Musharraf is weak, why is he negotiating with Benazir Bhutto? After all, the military and its supporting ashraafia consider the PPP to be an internal enemy to their hegemonistic status within the country, as much as they consider India to be an external enemy in terms of the regional power equation. The answer perhaps lies in comparative political standing. PML-N does have a national stature; but, after the mass defections to PML-Q, it is now left with only a rump. Of course, General Musharraf’s exit can see most of the Q-Leaguers flocking back to their parent party.

However, the party will then be seen as a continuation of the king’s party and fail to command the kind of legitimacy that is now sorely needed. The MMA also has a national presence, but its retrogressive ideology is now passé. Other parties have a regional presence, while yet others can fit into a bus. The PPP is the largest political party with roots in all the provinces. It is the only party that commands the moral and political stature to salvage the country from the sorry state it has been reduced to. History is repeating itself.

The second question is: if the PPP is in a relatively strong position, then why has Benazir Bhutto chosen to dialogue with the wounded dictator? The answer, perhaps, lies in realpolitik and in the fact that she and her party colleagues have learnt some valuable lessons from history. All political and civil society segments are now agreed on the imperative of clipping the military’s political wings and sending it back to the barracks. The question is: how is this to be done? Given that the military carries weapons, one way is to launch an armed struggle.

This is an option that neither Benazir Bhutto nor Nawaz Sharif would opt for. Primarily, they do not command the capacity for armed action. More pertinently, however, they and their parties do not possess the proclivity for violence. Thus, if the violence option is excluded and if peaceful transfer of power remains the only possibility, there will be a need to talk. The military cannot and will not make a unilateral decision to surrender power to the political parties and walk away. The transfer will have to be negotiated. That is what Benazir Bhutto is doing.

If Benazir Bhutto were to accept becoming prime minister, or even agree to nominate someone for the position, a la Mohammed Khan Junejo, Zafarrullah Jamali or Shaukat Aziz, answerable to a military-president rather than to Parliament, it would certainly be tantamount to a ‘deal’. It would also be deplorable and amount to erasing the gains from decades of struggle for political rights by the people of the country and by the members and supporters of her own party. It would also entrench the military in the corridors of power for perhaps another quarter of a century.

Fortunately, that is not likely to happen. Benazir Bhutto does not need to scrape power crumbs from the hands of a military dictator. She has endured the heavy personal costs of political struggle for too long. She is heading the largest political party in the country that has sustained the continuous onslaught of the establishment for about three decades. She commands the confidence that her party can ascend to power on the strength of a mandate from the people.

Benazir Bhutto and her associates also appear to have learnt lessons from history. The uncompromising struggle against Ayub Khan in 1968 and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977 failed to bring about a democratic change of government. Ayub Khan was followed by General Yahya Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto by General Ziaul Haq. Both the military regimes caused enormous damage to the country and to the lives of the people. General Yahya Khan dismembered the country and General Ziaul Haq fragmented the political fabric of society.

General Musharraf has created civil war-like conditions, with insurgencies in Balochistan and FATA, attempts to enforce – by violence – Taliban-style religious norms and suicide bombings in the heart of the federal capital. The seriousness of the internal crisis facing the country demands a consensual approach among the major parties at least. Clearly, this is not the case, with the PPP and other opposition parties adopting diametrically opposite strategies.

The All Pakistan Democratic Movement (APDM) appears to be a reincarnation of the PNA of 1977. There were hard-line elements within the PNA who were opposed to any negotiated settlement with the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and forced an uncompromising stand. The result was a coup. A similar uncompromising struggle, being advocated by the constituent parties of the Nawaz Sharif-Qazi Husain Ahmed-led APDM, carries the danger of yet another military takeover and postponement of a democratic transition for, perhaps, another decade.

Benazir Bhutto appears to have taken cognizance of the fact that pushing General Musharraf to the wall is likely to provoke a coup and she is, apparently, trying to avert such an eventuality. She has assessed that General Musharraf is weak, has realised that repeating the failed tactics of 1968 and 1977 would be immature and irresponsible, and has decided to negotiate in order to ‘persuade’ the general to engage in an orderly transition.

MMA’s shrill outbursts against any possible entente between General Musharraf and the PPP can be understandable. The political space that they currently occupy is on account of the vacuum created by the forced absence of the PPP and PML-N. Their return to the political arena threatens to send the MMA back to the political periphery. Nawaz Sharif’s opposition is less understandable. After all, any concession that Benazir Bhutto can extract from General Musharraf – return to Pakistan, withdrawal of cases, withdrawal of the two-term limitation, etc. – will also benefit Nawaz Sharif.

On a more substantive note, the PML-N’s absolute refusal to talk to General Musharraf or his emissaries or to accommodate anyone from the PML-Q on account of their association with the military regime demonstrates their commitment to pristine principles and is admirable as such. However, there appears to be a contradiction in the sense that the PML-N has shown no compunction about forging an alliance with the MMA, which provided General Musharraf the constitutional crutches to continue in power – in uniform – and which continues to be a coalition partner with the general’s PML-Q in the provincial government in Balochistan.

The PPP’s insistence that the MMA has to first end its partnership with the PML-Q and quit the Balochistan government in order to be accepted as an opposition party appears to be more logical.

Pakistan has come across many crossroads in its history. It is across a crucial one now. The country will go through an orderly transition or jerk back to another period of military misrule. It is a choice between democratic resurgence and authoritarian decay. The major parties carry a heavy responsibility. The role that the smaller parties play in shaping the context of the transition will also be of crucial importance. Will the political leadership measure up?

Choice before the country

IS Pervez Musharraf on his way out? Don’t count on it. You might not like the consequences even if he were. In March, Musharraf demanded the resignation of the Supreme Court Chief Justice. The Chief Justice refused.

Clashes ignited in mid-May when henchmen from Musharraf’s ally, the MQM, prevented the Chief Justice from leaving Karachi airport to address a bar association meeting. (He spurned the government’s offer of a helicopter). Dozens of people were killed and scores wounded.

Street demonstrations seek full restoration of democracy, we are told, with cricket hero Imran Khan leading the charge (from overseas). Democracy is coming to Pakistan, and not a moment too soon. For Pakistan is endangered by burgeoning religious sectarianism, as evidenced by the Lal Masjid siege and its bloody consequences in Islamabad. Media commentators solemnly say this spells an end to Musharraf’s misrule and fooling around with the mullahs.

In July in London Imran Khan’s tiny party Tehrik-i-Insaf joined hands with former prime minister Nawaz Sharif of the PML (N) which, however, happens to be the party most inclined historically to do deals with the mullahs. Benazir Bhutto of the PPP stayed away, partly because she has taken a ‘no mullahs” stand. Bhutto reportedly also was negotiating with Musharraf for a deal to restore her to political life in Pakistan. Things aren’t quite what they seem in most media reports.Indeed, every political player tried at one time or another to reach an understanding with the religious zealots, which is why Musharraf did not attack the Lal Masjid earlier than he did. But, contrary to media images, the principal anti-Musharraf forces in Pakistan are the mullahs, augmented by small regional and nationalist parties operating in Balochistan and the NWFP. The most extreme clerics waged hyper-puritanical campaigns for years, raiding video shops, smashing satellite dishes, shutting down alleged brothels.

All this has been leaking lately into Islamabad via the Lal Masjid. These hidebound mullahs are the least progressive group imaginable, principally concerned with propagating Sharia laws. And yet these are the key people Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif are making common cause with, in the name of democratic values.

In the brutal burlesque played out at the Lal Masjid, Musharraf gingerly negotiated with two mullah brothers to tamp down their embarrassing excesses. Joining this mollifying mission earlier this year was government minister Ejazul Haq, a son of former dictator Zia, the man who installed the father of the two mullah brothers in the mosque in the first place.

The siege revolved around a small fanatic home-grown movement bent on cleansing the country of certain kinds of vice, evincing a narrow view which most urban Pakistanis do not share. Nearly nine out of 10 Pakistanis vote for the three majority parties, when they get the chance.

Imran Khan says that Pakistan’s elites are corrupt, although all along he has associated with select members. H was a caustic critic of former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. Now Khan and Sharif cheerfully embrace in order to back the Chief Justice, whose was recently restored to his seat by the Supreme Court. What is going on and why?

Apart from a few exceptions, such as the restoration of the Chief Justice, a pattern of judicial submissiveness to the government formed after partition. Pakistan’s leadership ruled through the British Colonial Act (1935), nipped and tucked to suit their needs. After the death of Jinnah, the bureaucracy and the army were the strongest forces. After the crumbling of the political process in 1953-54, leading bureaucrat Iskander Mirza — in league with the army — became the first president.

After two years, General Ayub Khan deposed him. Successor General Yahya Khan in 1970 ordered the first free elections. In West Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto got the most seats, but East Pakistan was swept by the Awami League. West Pakistan was in no humour to share power. The result was the debacle which ended in the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.

Bhutto’s high jinks eventually ignited a mass movement against him. The result was Zia taking over. The judiciary was unequivocally subservient to the executive. Zia hanged Bhutto with court connivance and, without a peep from the West which was pouring in money and arms, he started his Islamicisation campaign.

Zia happily played US ally during the 1980s Soviet-Afghan war, but was killed in 1988. Elections took place. Benazir and Sharif each took two turns in power — launching selective if justified corruption investigations of one another. Musharraf refers with contempt to both leaders’ kleptocratic tendencies.

All this time the judiciary approved all the doings of the government. This is the sort of intermittent democracy Pakistan displayed. Still, it is democracy of a sort.

Under investigation during his second term, Sharif unleashed political goons on the Supreme Court until the Chief Justice stepped aside. This same Sharif today nobly backs a different Supreme Court justice. (In the 1990s Sharif had declared Pakistan should have a regime like the Taliban). Musharraf, after ousting Sharif in 1999, became a pariah but after 9/11 America needed him. The US propped up Zia because they needed him to train and arm groups like the Taliban against the USSR and now they needed Musharraf against the Taliban. The first collaboration created jihadis and the present one is required to fight jihadis. Anyone who fails to appreciate these events, their connections, and the motives behind them, cannot begin to understand the “war on terror”.

Musharraf acted because the judge had impeded his orders for privatisations and allegedly exerted undue influence for favours (getting a son appointed to the police service). When he refused to resign, the lawyers’ lobby deemed this was the best time to fight the government. Insofar as the Chief Justice is concerned they succeeded, although doing so as much in street actions as in the courts.

What of Musharraf? There are no mass movements in the streets as in the waning days of Ayub Khan or Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The Lal Masjid aftermath, despite the recent bombing, is not going to topple Musharraf. Comparisons to the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984 are deeply misplaced. The stakes are not even remotely the same.

Musharraf is the only reliably secular man at the top. Western powers will not ditch his policy of ‘enlightened moderation’. Musharraf’s rivals just aren’t that appetising. Anyway, the major Pakistani players want the Americans to sort out the game in their favour. The US State Department will be content with a coalition of PPP, MQM and a fraction of the Muslim League (mostly already in government) if this arrangement provides stability. So most likely, a deal will be worked out whereby Musharraf is re-elected president by the National Assembly, the Senate and the four provincial assemblies, which act as an electoral college and national elections follow before the end of 2007. Shedding his uniform would be viewed as a sign of weakness if Musharraf does so before the next elections.

The current conflict reflects badly on all parties. Musharraf was wrong to remove the Chief Justice in advance of a Judicial Council’s investigation. The lawyers are wrong to advocate that the Chief Justice be cleared, whatever the evidence against him. Musharraf, as he announced he would, accepted the Supreme Court judgment. His wisest course is to do nothing more to aggravate the situation.

The best prospect for a progressive secular coalition is President Musharraf reinstalled (minus epaulettes) plus a coalition of the PPP and the MQM along with Pathan and Baloch nationalist parties. While business is happy under Musharraf, there’s a long list of unfulfilled objectives regarding poverty, developmental projects, and anti-corruption measures to be tackled. So Pakistan will indeed enjoy the fruits of formal democracy again, but particularly here one should be careful what one wishes for.