ON August 15, Ms Benazir Bhutto told an interviewer in New York that she had staked her political career on her negotiations with General Pervez Musharraf, and that he must act on the understandings reached with her within the next three weeks.

Meeting with PML-Q legislators from several Punjab districts the following day, the general reportedly “ruled out” any power-sharing arrangement with the PPP, because it was going to be his own party’s (PML-Q’s) main opponent in the forthcoming general elections. Despite this disclaimer, reports of a deal in the making continue to appear in the American, British and Pakistani media, and Ms Bhutto is doing her part in feeding them.

We have heard different versions of the substance of these negotiations. Ms Bhutto has said more than once that she is not covetous of power, and that her objective in talking with the general and his representatives has been to facilitate a peaceful transition to democracy. This is hard to accept. The transition to democracy does not require her to “work” with Musharraf. He can step down, turn his office over to the chairman of the Senate, who can then dissolve the parliament and call for new elections. The resulting assemblies can elect a president. This can all be done peacefully.

If General Musharraf rejects this option, which he seems determined to do, he will get himself elected by the present assemblies, if the courts let him, and he can then have the Election Commission hold a free and fair election. Democracy will return, and it will then be up to the politicians, who emerge from the election, to keep it and make it work and flourish.

None of this requires Ms Bhutto’s participation in governance. It does not even require her presence in Pakistan, though the electoral process will doubtless gain in credibility if she is allowed to return home and participate in it. All that Musharraf has to do is to withdraw the cases against her, or defer their hearings until sometime after the election and let her remain free on bail in the meantime. As for the Sharifs, the Supreme Court has ruled that they should be allowed to return.

Actually, Benazir has more than a transition to democracy in mind. It is generally believed that she wants the cases against her to be withdrawn and, in addition, she is asking the general to pave the way for her to become prime minister a third time by getting parliament to pass a constitutional amendment that will allow such a move (currently forbidden). We will come back to these demands of hers shortly.

The United States’ government, it seems, has been pressing for a power-sharing arrangement between General Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto. Mr Richard Boucher, an assistant secretary in the US Department of State, is said to have conferred with both parties three times in recent weeks in this connection. In American calculation, the general should stay at the helm because he, more than any civilian head of government, will be able and willing to deploy military forces to fight Al Qaeda and Taliban militants and suppress other “extremists” in Pakistan.

American officials feel also that, supported only by PML-Q and its allies, General Musharraf cannot govern effectively or get rid of Islamic militants, because both he and his party have fallen low in public esteem. They see Ms Bhutto, head of a “mainstream” party with a good deal of popular support, as a secular-minded, enlightened moderate whose participation in the next government will compensate for the general’s low ratings. She has persuaded the Bush administration that she and Musharraf, working together, will be more effective in combating militants and terrorists.

In my view, this reasoning is based on a misreading of the ground realities of Pakistani politics. It should be noted, first, that America’s own standing in Pakistan has been falling since the Bush administration’s invasion of Afghanistan and later that of Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been killed, and many more rendered homeless and destitute, as a result of these actions.

Pakistanis tend to interpret the Bush administration’s denunciations of Islamic militancy as an expression of its underlying hostility towards Islam and Muslims. This may not be a correct reading of President Bush’s mind, but it is there nevertheless. General Musharraf is seen as America’s agent in this “unholy” campaign.

It is true that the Taliban and other extremists are disrupting Pakistan’s own peace and security. But many of its people see these groups more as valiant resisters of America’s anti-Islam and anti-Muslim drives than as disrupters of their own domestic stability and good order.

It follows that Ms Bhutto’s induction as General Musharraf’s partner, and that upon President Bush’s urging, will not be well received in Pakistan. Her detractors will portray her as an American agent recruited to aid Musharraf in hunting down their own people in the country’s tribal regions and elsewhere. Some of her own party leaders and workers will be bewildered and dismayed by her willing acceptance of this role. Her standing in national politics will probably hit bottom. She may then turn out to be of little use to either Bush or Musharraf. If she cares for her political future, the better part of wisdom for her may be to stay away from the general — unless she sees her interests from an entirely different perspective.

Setting American interest in the matter aside, let us ask if collaboration with Musharraf will bring Ms Bhutto credit. He is regarded by many politically aware Pakistanis as a usurper, dictator, violator of the Constitution, and one who doesn’t really care for democracy. Polls show that a majority of the people wants him to go away. Those who opt for him do so because (being near-sighted) they do not see a viable alternative. They will take him as the lesser of the evils surrounding them. Working with him can then bring Ms Bhutto no political gains.

Ms Bhutto wants General Musharraf to withdraw the court cases (on charges of corruption, money laundering, misuse of official power) that are pending against her. This is within his giving. She wants him to give up his army post, but the time frame on which she insists is not clearly known. It may be that she will be satisfied if he drops his uniform sometime after his re-election by the present assemblies. That he will probably have to do because of other pressures, including those from the courts, bearing upon him. Ms Bhutto’s stand on this issue may do something for her sagging image, but otherwise it is not consequential.

It is not in Musharraf’s power to get a constitutional amendment passed that will enable Ms Bhutto to become prime minister. It will require a two-thirds majority of the total membership of the two Houses (not merely of those present and voting) to go through. The MMA, MQM, and the various PML groups (including some in the ruling party), in the present parliament will have no interest in enabling Ms Bhutto to become prime minister. The needed votes for passing this amendment are simply not there. It is unlikely that they will materialise even in the next parliament.

Ms Bhutto, along with everybody else, says she wants the next elections to be free and fair. Considering the domestic and international pressures in this regard, the likelihood is that government officials will not openly intervene in the electoral process to the advantage of a specific party. In three of the four party-based elections since 1988 no party won a majority of seats in the National Assembly, and the largest party in the House had to forge a coalition to form the government. (Interestingly enough, the same has been the case in India during the last decade and a half).

There is no reason to expect that the PPP will be returned as the majority party in the elections to be held later this year or early next year. Even if it emerges as one of the larger parties it will have a hard time finding coalition partners. Its endeavours to make a deal with General Musharraf have estranged PML-N and other components of APDM. MQM and some of the PML factions (Pagara and Chattha groups) will likely go with PML-Q.

In sum, the odds are that when the election results are out, it will transpire that Ms Bhutto has nothing to offer General Musharraf that is good enough for him to go out of his way to befriend her. I think all of this has been spelled out to him, which may explain his declaration that a working relationship with the PPP is not contemplated. But in that case why have his representatives been meeting Ms Bhutto, and why did he himself confer with her (reportedly for three and a half hours) in Abu Dhabi?

I don’t really know; I can speculate, and your guess may be as good as mine.

The following possibilities come to mind. First, he did not want to appear to have dismissed the American officials’ urgings out of hand. He wanted them to see that he was trying to work something out with Ms Bhutto. He may have subsequently explained to them that it was not in his power to meet her demands, and that a power-sharing arrangement with her would, in any case, serve no useful purpose (his or American).

Second, he may have started the discussions with her, thinking that the possibility of developing a working relationship with Ms Bhutto deserved to be explored, and it took time to discover that the contemplated arrangement could not be made.

Third, he may have wanted to convey to the Chaudhrys and company that they were not indispensable to his political goals, that he had other options, and that they should, therefore, remain appropriately subservient. Having received firm assurances of their loyalty, he reciprocated with the afore-mentioned declaration that a power-sharing arrangement with the PPP was ruled out.

The next few weeks may further unravel this mystery.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst
anwarsyed@cox.net

PAKISTAN has a constitution that is long-winded and riddled with amendments made and un-made over 35 years. Ziaul Haq’s Eighth Amendment, though counted as one, made 41 additions or deletions, Pervez Musharraf’s Seventeenth only a few less.

With seven amendments made in the time of Z.A. Bhutto and other prime ministers it is paradoxical to consider this mangled document the same Constitution as it was when unanimously enacted in April 1973 and to expect all parties and people to pledge allegiance to it.

No government has ever conformed to the provisions even of this much-amended Constitution — this one least of all. The parliament — the National Assembly and the Senate taken together — is acknowledged to be sovereign but hardly ever has it voted a government in or out of office. Ziaul Haq formally degraded its position in the constitutional scheme by renaming it the Majlis-i-Shoora (consultative council), implying thereby that the head of state or government may consult it in the making of laws and policies. And that is what is really happening. Most of the time, parliament is only ratifying the ordinances issued by the president.

It is somewhat puzzling that many parliaments in succession have chosen not to remove this slighting appellation from the text. The legislators should at least set the nomenclature right if they are unable to assert their supremacy over the executive.Even in its present disfigured parliamentary form, the Constitution contains a number of safeguards against the concentration of all power in the hands of a single individual. Yet Pakistan remains what is appropriately described as a “one-bullet regime” — and never was it more so than now. If Musharraf had been so unlucky as to have lost his life in one of the four assassination attempts made on him the whole structure that he has so laboriously, and cunningly, put together would have come crumbling down.

Monopolising power and exercising it arbitrarily has not been a characteristic of military presidents alone. Elected prime ministers were no less. It is best illustrated by the quality of the presidents they chose. Chaudhry Fazal Elahi chosen by Z.A. Bhutto did not measure up to the status of the post but had a career in politics; Rafique Tarar not even that. A retired, orthodox judge his only claim to the high office lay in his being a friend of the Sharif family.

Neither Fazal Elahi nor Tarar had the stature to counsel or warn their prime ministers which is a prerogative of an otherwise ceremonial head of state in a parliamentary government. Resultantly, when the crunch came they could neither intervene nor mediate. Instead, they tamely submitted to the authority of the military rulers. They did not resign to launch a protest or to seek an instant legal remedy which would have made all the difference.

Once the president who symbolises the sovereignty of the state and is also the supreme commander of the armed forces succumbed to the new order the courts too found it convenient to acquiesce.

Had the Fifteenth Amendment bill not failed to become a law for want of a few votes in the Upper House, Shariat would have become the supreme law of the land (instead of the Constitution) with Nawaz Sharif as the sole arbiter. A question for him, and for Benazir as well, now to contemplate in exile is how much more did they involve the institutions of state (parliament, cabinet, civil service, provincial administrations) and their parties and electorate in decision-making than Musharraf does now?

Surely Musharraf involves Shaukat Aziz in the affairs of the government more than Nawaz Sharif did Tarar. The point of principle to emphasise is that our parliamentary system has not been able to withstand the extra-constitutional interventions because ambitious individuals in performing their official functions all along relied on their private hatchet or henchmen rather than on institutions. True to that tradition, the present version of parliamentary government also seems headed towards a fate no different.

The 1973 Constitution, though distorted to suit personal ends, even in its present shape contains enough safeguards to keep the country on an even keel if some dormant institutions are revived. The crises that erupted suddenly could be averted and the conflicts and grievances that simmer could be resolved if constitutional remedies were to be followed.

Some of the institutions that have not been allowed to play the part assigned to them in the Constitution are the Council of Common Interests (Articles 153 to 155), National Economic Council (Article 156), Islamic Council (Article 228) and the Supreme Judicial Council (Art 209).

The disputes among the provinces on the distribution of water (hence on the construction of the Kalabagh dam) and royalty on natural gas would not have become intractable, threatening the very unity of the federation had they been handled from the very beginning by the Council of Common Interests. This body, on which the centre and the provinces are equally represented, exists primarily for this purpose, and the Constitution describes its functions and procedure at length.

If opinion in the CCI is divided the dispute goes before the National Assembly and Senate in a joint sitting for a final and binding decision. The Bugti tribe would not have risen in rebellion nor would its defiant chief have had to be killed, and further, the relations between Sindh and Punjab would not have come under stress if the dam and gas royalty issues were left to be decided by the CCI and parliament.

Likewise, the economic grievances of the smaller provinces would not have blown into a sense of deprivation if the National Economic Council were to meet regularly instead of once a year and that too only to take note of the schemes already approved and implemented — and, in addition, if the prior constitutional right of the province to the gas it produces were also to be recognised.

The scope of the Islamic Council’s functions is wide enough for the government to have gone to it for advice on how to deal with Islamabad’s illegally built Hafsa madressah and the stubborn attitude of Lal Masjid’s armed clerics. Instead, it let politicians, Chaudhry Shujaat and Ejazul Haq, handle it. The result is that the government is being blamed for criminal connivance at illegal construction and also for a hundred deaths.

It was, perhaps, for the first time in the life of this Constitution that a reference was made to the Supreme Judicial Council to enquire into the “capacity and conduct of a judge” who also happened to be the Chief Justice of Pakistan. The council was, however, barred from adjudicating as the Supreme Court held the reference itself to be invalid.

But surely the lawyers’ protest and the court’s judgment should not have the effect of placing the judges beyond accountability. Nor should the impression go round, as indeed it has in some quarters, that if previously the Supreme Court acted under the pressure of the executive it is now tending to act under the pressure of the legal profession.

For the judiciary to be truly independent it has to rise above all pressures.

The executive’s high-handedness can never be condoned but the time is appropriate to remind the learned judges of what a great American judge had to say: “We are final not because we are infallible but we are infallible only because we are final.”

The law requires obedience and not mental acceptance of the orders of a court. The lawyers should not be seen beating or insulting those in their ranks who disagree with them. The way they treated Naeem Bokhari is utterly reprehensible. Presidents and judges come and go but the basic values of human decency and tolerance of dissent must be preserved for all times.