LAHORE, Aug 16: As his three-year term mandated by the Supreme Court nears completion, Gen Musharraf seems to have changed his goals, targeting his guns at the PPP of Ms Benazir Bhutto, having a second thought on the adversarial relationship with the PML(N) of deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

He regards the PPP chairperson as a security risk and is determined not to let her return to power although Ms Bhutto had said recently that she was willing to share power with the general.

To achieve this target, the government is supporting the establishment of a coalition of heterogeneous parties: Grand National Alliance.

Most of the important parties have already decided on which side of the political divide they have to stand and the remaining are being nudged to join hands with the pro-government camp. The process of realignments will complete during the next couple of weeks during which nomination papers are to be filed, scrutinized and withdrawn in the light of mutual adjustments.

TheThursday meeting Functional Muslim League President Pir Pagara held with President Musharraf at the latter’s invitation shows the panic in the government ranks. Only a few weeks ago, the Sindhi leader had said at a news conference in Lahore that Gen Musharraf was on his way out and that there was no possibility of the elections being held on schedule. He had also stated that the elections would be held by the general succeeding President Musharraf.

The remarks had provoked Gen Musharraf to an extent that he had cancelled a meeting with leaders of various factions of the PML which was to be held only after a couple of days.

What has happened during these few weeks that the president had had to extend a fresh invitation to Pir Pagara for a meeting, forgetting the Sindhi leader’s earlier remarks which had remained under discussion in political quarters for many subsequent days.

Ostensibly, it is the reports of intelligence agencies — that in the prevailing situation the PPP will emerge as the single largest party in the general elections — which has forced the general to review his thinking and plan afresh to use all arrows in his quiver to keep the PPP away from the corridors of power.

Knowledgeable sources say that in the meeting Pir Pagara asked the general to play a personal role in the unification of various factions of the PML. Unless this was done, the Pir is reported to have said, the October elections would be of little help and interest for him as a ruler.

The Pir also told Gen Musharraf about threat to his life and rule.

It is not clear whether the general would take any step to reunify the PML groups.

But opposition leaders believe that unless the general is sure that his supporters will be in two thirds majority in parliament to indemnify all his acts and actions of the three-year rule and endorse the result of the April 30 referendum — by which he gets another five-year term — he can’t afford free and fair elections. The PML(QA), which is regarded as King’s Party, stood exposed on April 30 when despite strong assurances it failed to bring voters in large numbers to the polling stations to express their support for President Musharraf. The general can’t rely on the party any more, no matter how tall claims of popular support by the party. He has to make his own calculations. His stakes are higher than the leaders of the PML-QA and he knows that getting a two thirds majority will be an uphill task, specially when the number of assemblies’ seats has also been substantially raised.

It is in the light of these calculations that every Tom, Dick and Harry is being asked to jump on the GNA’s bandwagon to contain the PPP. To swell the crowd in the GNA, the character and credentials of various parties are being ignored. Parties which are opposed to the federation have joined the coalition and some others demanding a new constitution in place of 1973’s are reportedly being approached.

To isolate the PPP, Gen Musharraf approached even the exiled Sharifs through the editor of a local daily. The editor himself said at a ceremony that he had carried the offer that if the Sharifs nominated somebody other than family member of theirs as president of the unified PML, Mian Shahbaz Sharif would be allowed to return to Pakistan after the elections.

It was after the editor’s visit that Mian Shahbaz was elected as new president of the PML. However, the former Punjab chief minister sees no utility in returning to Pakistan after the general elections.

Observers say that the anti-PPP policy of the general will not bring the desired results. The more he talks against it, the more support it will get, specially in Sindh.

Already his efforts to relegate the party into the background have failed. The leaders of the PPP and the PML(N) are subjects of discussion at all political gatherings — and the more the government treads on this course, the more benefit the two parties will get.

The credit for bringing the two ‘sworn’ political enemies so close to each other that they are willing to make electoral adjustments also goes to the military regime.