THE coming elections will be the mother of all elections. So declares the general-president. He takes good care not to mention that his own bid for another presidential term from the present assemblies, when their own term will be expiring soon thereafter, qualifies to be considered as the mother of all jokes. Yet this is the joke about to be played in all seriousness on the people of Pakistan.

Soon-to-be-dead assemblies — although the uncharitable would say they were dead the day they were born — recycling a president-cum-army chief who has been around since 1999 and giving him ‘constitutional’ cover, even as he clings to his uniform, is a joke with the Constitution and, if this be not too harsh a verdict, an assault on common sense. Yet we are being told that this is what the Constitution itself dictates, nay commands.

All manner of constitutional experts, led by parliamentary affairs minister Sher Afgan Niazi, have been busy this past one year propagating the line that as the president’s term will be expiring in Sep/Oct this year, the government is left with no choice under the Constitution except to take a presidential vote from the present assemblies, no matter if these assemblies are about to walk into the sunset and oblivion just a month later, in November.

Such passionate regard for the Constitution has seldom been seen before, that too from the policy-holders of a military coup. Talk of the devil citing scripture for his purpose. For the mother of all jokes sanction is being sought from the Constitution. This is not entirely surprising given the circumstance that no document in the world can have been more abused, mutilated and misinterpreted than the 1973 Constitution.

General elections would matter, and truly deserve the accolade of mother of all elections, if the president was to be elected by the new assemblies. After all, in this contrived set-up it is the president who is the source of all power, not parliament which is just a showcase or the prime minister who, alas, is little better than a dummy. Indeed, President George Bush allows Nuri Al-Maliki, the prime minister of Iraq, more power than Gen Musharraf allows Shaukat Aziz. (Hand it to Shaukat though for remaining unfazed.)

Trusting the next assemblies to ‘elect’ him? Unthinkable and therefore out of the question. Being no one’s fool, we can be sure the president will take no such risk. Pakistani saviours on horseback like dealing with certainties, not the unknown. The president may pride himself on his courage, oft proclaiming he is afraid of nothing, but we can safely assume his definition of courage includes everything else under the sun but not the risk of a free election, even a presidential election with its restricted electoral college.

Our military godfathers, perhaps for good reason, have always hated popular opinion more than anything else. In 1971 they sacrificed half the country but were not willing to accommodate East Pakistani aspirations. Even at present, the military leadership can bend over backwards to appease India, in ways not always easy to comprehend, but it cannot come to terms with popular aspirations. Through struggle and sacrifice Nepal may have won a measure of representative rule but not self-proclaimed fortress of Islam, Pakistan.

The president says that if his supporters are not elected in the coming elections, the country will plunge into darkness. Well, the lights go out whenever Triple One Brigade stationed in Westridge, Rawalpindi, marches on the capital to depose yet another prime minister. Not for nothing did the late Maulana Kausar Niazi say that there should be a separate graveyard in Islamabad for ex prime ministers, given their heavy turnover. So what darkness are we talking about?

In any event, it’s not a little strange that the motley elements gathered in the nominal ruling party, the Q League — real ruling party being Army Headquarters — should be held up as the symbols of light. This makes the Q League president, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain of Gujrat, the biggest national beacon of all, almost a lighthouse. Trust the exigencies of military rule to throw up such bizarre analogies.

General elections in the present situation can only produce another showpiece parliament and another dummy prime minister. Indeed, the political system introduced by the 1999 coup is designed only for the production of dummies, even if the PPP is foolish enough to lend one of its own for the prime minister’s office.

Accordingly, the real test of light and darkness will be not the general elections but the presidential election. The presidential camp may be treating it as all sewn up and settled, with only the formality of it remaining, but this is not an accurate picture.

For if the president wants to have it all his own way, insisting on getting himself ‘elected’ president from the existing assemblies, even as he keeps wearing his uniform, that could be the last provocation, a trigger for mass resignations from the assemblies. It may not happen because we know what stuff our opposition parties are made of, but at least the threat is there. And as long as it remains, the presidential camp cannot be at peace.

Mounting a coup is the stuff of certainty. Contesting a genuine election, even if from a restricted number of electors, is the height of uncertainty. Power works wonders. With power at your disposal you can reach for the stars: crack a whip and make the political parties jump; conjure paper parties, such as the Q League, out of thin air; hold out a hoop for the holy fathers of the MMA to jump through, not once but repeatedly. Dressed in the robes of power even an ass or an idiot looks powerful and wise.

But the great thing about an election is that for some time at least it makes even the arrogant humble. Going to someone and asking for his/her vote is an exercise in humility. If the general’s luck runs out (admittedly, a remote possibility) and he has to go about garnering votes for himself later this year, that too in uniform — a first for Pakistan because no serving chief has yet put himself to this challenge — we can safely assume that he will gain fresh insights into reality, a whole new dimension of things opening up before him. Call it the higher education: this is what elections impart.

It will also be a moment of weakness for the president like no other since 1999, the opposition parties finally in a position to show some attitude. If the PPP’s terms for a settlement are not met, it could walk out of the assemblies. The PML-N will not be far behind. The maulanas, or those from the Jamaat-i-Islami, could do the same, erasing thereby from their masthead the charge of collusion or collaboration. Even if the government musters a majority, as it can easily do, with the electoral college in tatters the election will become a sham.

I am not saying this is bound to happen. But it can. Provided of course the opposition parties remain focused and able to resist government moves to divide and conquer.

Contesting or not contesting the general elections under Musharraf is not the issue. This will come later. The most important issue is the presidential election. Will the opposition parties be able to put up a united front or will they dance to the president’s tune? Will some form of principle be their guide or well-tested expediency?

For the first time since the October 99 coup the initiative will be with the opposition parties, not the government. What they make of it will have a bearing on the question whether Pakistan has a democratic future or it is destined to live under variations of military rule.