September 24, 2005

ONE of the meanings ascribed to politics is the activities associated with the governance of a country. Governance is certainly the ultimate objective of any party seriously practising politics in a national context.

In Pakistan, the number of parties that appear as viable contenders for office include the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP — Patriots et al), the traditional Muslim League (ML — without the Qs and Ns), the heterogeneous Islamist clerics, Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) possibly in coalition with provincial favourites like the Baloch National Party and NWFP’s Awami National Party.

However, the cock of the walk in the political arena is the military. For this reason the survival of civil dispensations has invariably depended on a give-and-take arrangement brokered by a contender with the high command. Whenever such arrangements have failed to resolve issues involving military interests, the government of the day has fallen. The ground realities indicate that no political party today has the resources to keep the army out of politics. Moreover, the credibility of most parties is much eroded by repeated compromises with the military and with one another, and by their inability to observe the norms of democracy.

In this scenario the best chance for successful completion of a full term of office would appear to include a skilfully negotiated arrangement with the army supplemented by a programme of governance that prioritizes matters such as development of the middle class, independence of the judiciary, education of the masses, infrastructural development, curtailment of perks, privileges and corruption and empowerment of the law and order authorities for effectively enforcing the writ of state.

Other matters of importance such as foreign affairs, poverty alleviation and economic development must — at least in the short term — give precedence to the former for countering the growing brutalization of society and reimposing a civilized order.

Amongst the contenders, the PPP under Benazir Bhutto and the PML under Nawaz Sharif have, in recent memory, had two separate back-to-back opportunities of running ‘co-existential’ democratic governments. The fact that their ventures failed does not, ironically, preclude them from regaining office. The PPP does have, as claimed, an electorate in several Sindh and Punjab constituencies. The rural support is largely feudal. It is a secular party that propagates a populist programme with which it has had limited success.

During its two stints in office (1988-90 and 1993-96) it instituted freedom of the press, facilitated meaningful NGO activism and provided some relief from urban terrorism in Karachi. The rest of its time was spent consolidating its government which was constantly threatened by the Nawaz Sharif opposition, the army high command and its internal weaknesses: grandstanding in royal style accompanied by rhetorical flourishes; corruption in high places, and acquiescence in the disastrous Afghan ‘strategic depth’ and pro-Taliban policies (which it could not — in deference to the high command — probably have resisted).

Today the PPP, although fragmented by the military’s wrecking crew, is still a viable candidate for office, although its appropriateness for governance is open to debate. Its leadership remains tainted by sleaze with international ramifications; succession in leadership is mired in a ‘royal birthright’ syndrome; and it is represented by aging veterans reluctant, inexplicably, to nurture a second generation capability.

The next aspirant, the ML, has held office more often and for longer spells than any other contender. Generally perceived as the king’s party, it has been persistently hijacked to provide political cover for recurrent military takeovers. It has also been manipulated for controlling the legislature by that civilian oligarch Nawaz Sharif, who, but for the Musharraf takeover, might have been ruling today as Ameer-ul-Momineen.

The ML has no credible political agenda, splintering, coalescing and realigning to reflect the views of the incumbent ruler. Its membership is feudal in appearance, outlook and style, comprising the traditional rajas, pirs and nawabs and even latter day grandees like the ubiquitous Chaudhris who, having taken over control of the post-Nawaz Sharif ML, provide the requisite parliamentary support, in the guise of the ML-Q, to the Musharraf regime.

Yet beneath its chameleon-like adaptability, there is a sinister streak of fundamentalism. Nawaz Sharif fraternized with the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) and other clergy and with rightist elements in the army, facilitating madressah expansion, consolidating Taliban governance and proliferating the jihadi culture internationally — a stratagem supported today in the ML- Q, overtly by Ejazul Haq, and surreptitiously by the Chaudhris.

The two ‘popular’ Nawaz Sharif governments (1991-93 and 1997-99) also gave us a national highway and a refurbished Lahore but otherwise failed to provide responsible governance. Currently there is some doubt whether the ML, stripped of its trappings and denied government support, would win a fairly conducted election. Even if it were to succeed, its track record of political duplicity make it an unworthy candidate for office.

The MMA, the third contender, already heads one provincial government (NWFP) and shares another (Balochistan), and is aiming at taking over the central government. Starting out as a vote gathering device, today it is more a coalition of diverse clerical groups (Ziaul Haq’s flotsam and jetsam) than a unified political entity with a common agenda other than for gaining power by democratic means in order to enforce a theocratic order.

The MMA’s electoral support is largely seminarian. Each constituent is headed by a cleric who has recast his group in his own image. The solitary politician amongst the lot is Maulana Fazlur Rahman of the Jamiatul Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) who has played ball from time to time with the PPP, the ML, and of course, the army.

The contradictions within the MMA will probably be its undoing. Cracks are already apparent: abandonment of the MMA by the maverick Maulana Samiul Haq (JUI-S); infighting between JI and JUI-F candidates during the local body election; divergent views of Qazi Husain Ahmed (JI) and Maulana Fazlur Rahman (JUI-F) on the NWFP’s participation in the National Finance Commission deliberations.

The most insurmountable of all contradictions is the juxtaposition on a common platform of the Shia TNFJ with the Salafist Ahle Hadith (a leading proponent of the anti-Shia lobby) and of the Sunni-Barelvi JUP with the Sunni-Deobandi JI, JUI-F, etc. (who question the Islamic legitimacy of the former). The other unresolved issue is the kind of Islamic order proposed for the nation. If ever this issue is debated, it is expected to make the fur fly on account of the conflicting doctrines of the protagonists.

MMA’s pre-election radicalism has translated in the governance of the NWFP into clumsy Talibanic killjoy regulations for improving the moral fibre of citizens, capped by a misguided anachronism called the Hasba bill. Such indicators (having precipitated its downfall in the local bodies elections) fortify the view that an MMA government at the centre would be a recipe for disaster.

The final contender, the MQM, emerged in the 1980s as a student movement spearheaded by Altaf Hussain. By the 1990s it had morphed from a reactionary Muhajir movement confronting the PPP’s Sindhi nationalism into a serious player in the political arena representing, inter alia, urban middle class interests. Since then it has had diverse dealings with successive governments to such an extent that it cannot be discounted in future political configurations.

On the dark side, there are implications of alleged aberrations ranging from torture and extortion to even worse — all denied by MQM spokespersons. Whatever the truth, the MQM presence has changed at least the Karachi cityscape forever.

Of late the MQM appears to have turned a corner as evident from recent pictures of a reinvented Altaf Hussain transformed from a cult figure into a neatly trimmed, urbane statesman. In similar fashion, the party has altered its urbanized ethnicity into a well-informed, secular one. Today it can lay claim to substantive electoral support free of government involvement (thanks to its traditional supporters and the added success in the local bodies elections) and to sufficient savvy to meet the challenges of the ML’s entrenched feudalism, the MMA’s extremist agenda and the PPP’s vote bank.

However, for gaining general acceptance as a party to vote for it should focus on reconstructive measures such as producing a Pakistan-based leadership in consultation with the founder; nurturing coexistence with the Sindhi masses; developing a vote bank in Punjab; promoting the input of the non-Muhajir intelligentsia in policy formulation; abjuring methods and practices inconsistent with the accepted norms and principles of national politics; and weeding out current and erstwhile law breakers from the party fold.

If the MQM were to meet these expectations, national politics would stand to gain.

The writer is a barrister at law and lecturer in legal studies.

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