“The statesman’s task is to hear God’s footsteps marching through history, and to try to catch on to His coattails as He marches past.” — Bismarck

EVEN the politically benighted should be able to detect the great unease now pervading the government. Election 2007 is the burning issue. The military presidency and its civilian facade, the Q League, want the elections — for president, parliament, the four provincial assemblies — won but are less and less sure how this can be done — done, that is, without exciting mass ridicule or popular anger.

Basically two groups within the ruling citadel are vying to put across their point of view. One led by the Chaudhries (Shujaat and Pervez) who, playing upon Gen Musharraf’s worst fears, are urging him to get ‘re-elected’ by the present assemblies. The other comprising a growing number of politicos within the ruling alliance who feel that down this path danger lies and that it is best for everyone concerned if the president takes off his uniform, holds elections and then presents himself for reelection before the next assemblies. There is dignity and honour in this course, they argue, as well as the preservation of the present order.

The Chaudhries have vast interests to protect. They always were big, both in politics and business. But thanks to Gen Musharraf’s ‘real democracy’ of which they are the biggest kingpins, they have become bigger than ever before. What they enjoy today they could scarcely have dreamt of. It is thus easy to see how they would consider it the height of foolishness to put all this on the line for the sake of ‘morality’ and ‘principle’.

Gen Musharraf’s own long-term welfare and place in history may lie in adhering, at long last, to the spirit and letter of constitutionalism. But the Chaudhries are buying none of this. They want him to stick to his uniform — even if the rest of the nation is getting sick just at the sight of it — for their own reasons. It is hard to fault them, the president’s uniform being their lifeline to their present eminence.

Hand it to them that they have been smart, successfully cultivating the impression that the general is beholden to them for political support. And the general, beset by nameless fears, is half-inclined to believe them.

Actually, it is the other way round. Without the general and his ‘real democracy’ the Chaudhries would be confined to the vicarage of Gujrat. Shujaat would have a hard time getting ‘reelected’ president of the Q League. And talented Moonis, Pervez Ellahi’s shining son, would not be aspiring to become heir apparent of the family’s army-assisted political legacy.

The growing murmurs of the anti-uniform lobby in the ruling alliance — even if its intrepid members look six times over their shoulders before saying anything — are no more about principle than about the geopolitics of the Chaudhries. The anti-uniform lobby, however, believes that the path being urged upon the general can bring the whole system down leading to the political destruction of everyone associated with it. Their charity thus is self-serving although it also happens to coincide with mainstream opinion outside the government.

In fairness it must be said that the pro-uniform lobby — its mantra: stick to uniform at all costs or we are lost — stretches beyond the Chaudhries. Within its nervous pale it includes all ministers, senators, MNAs, women parliamentarians, who have no constituency of their own and are merely in the assemblies because of presidential favour.

For instance, I have the highest regard for information minister Muhammad Ali Durrani, state minister for information Tariq Azeem, education minister Lt Gen (r) Javed Ashraf Qazi, Q League secretary-general Mushahid Hussain and the Donya Azizs and Kashmala Tariqs who constitute the front ranks of ‘enlightened moderation’ but I can’t imagine them getting elected in a general election from anywhere in Pakistan. It stands to reason that they should jump through every hoop the presidential interest dictates.

(As a matter of fact, every party has its share of Kashmala Tariqs, women parliamentarians who can’t make it to the assemblies except through reserved seats. In the cake-cutting PPP — always cutting a cake for some reason or the other — Sherry Rehman, Fauzia Wahab, and a host of similar figures. The PML-N follows much the same line although given its limited number of seats in the present assemblies it has not been able to promote any large number of reserved seat favourites. The holy fathers of the MMA have also caught on to this tradition.

Many a burqa-clad, finger-pointing, fire-spouting woman member of the assemblies from its ranks is related to this or that of its leading lights. As for the MQM, all its MNAs, MPAs and senators, are nominees of party supremo, Altaf Hussain. In that sense, all of them are ‘reserved seat’ members.)

The uniform loyalists are painting a rosy picture of the future, saying the Q League has become strong while the PPP and the PML-N, their leaders in forced exile, are in no position to mount an effective challenge to the ruling combine. The MQM is with the government (and why shouldn’t it be, given the enormous benefits it has reaped these past six years and more?) The holy fathers of the MMA are divided, Qazi Hussein Ahmed pulling in one direction and the government’s secret weapon, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, in another. As for the people, they are listless and not interested in any agitation.

There may be a large element of truth in this analysis but what the uniform loyalists are failing to point out is that if, defying common sense, the president opts for ‘election’ by the present, increasingly bankrupt assemblies, he will be little better than Zulfikar Ali Bhutto the morning after the 1977 elections.

Bhutto had won a huge majority but the outcry at election methods was so great that instead of being triumphant, he was stricken, mortally wounded. What should have been a victory prelude turned into a funeral march.

Do the Chaudhries and the unelected joy-riders of the Musharraf nomenklatura wish to visit a similar fate upon their benefactor? Do they want Musharraf to become another Bhutto? These assemblies will ‘elect’ anyone president, even Manmohan Singh should that be the desired staff solution. So that is not the problem. But imagine the all-round laughter and the drums of ridicule that will be heard across the land if this course is adopted.

Also, from that point on the whole process for the election of the next assemblies will degenerate into outright farce. And the president’s uniform, far from being seen as a source of strength, will become the greatest liability of all.

Pay heed to the march of history (although in making this analogy in relation to Pakistani politics my deepest apologies must be to Bismarck). There is a time when certain things are possible, other times when they are not. The statesman does not so much create history as seize the opportunities presented by it.

The president-in-uniform has outlived his utility. The general says he is a man of courage and can look danger in the face. Who are we to disbelieve him? But then he should have the courage to do the right thing by himself and the nation.

Pakistan first, he has always insisted. How thrilling if for a change it means just that and not Musharraf first or, heaven forbid, the Chaudries.