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The wrong march

The modest inception of the Pakistan People’s Party in 1967 in Lahore did not seek to hide its ambitious goals. With its catchy slogan, “Roti, Kapra aur Makan” representing socialist ideals and its charismatic leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, both catching the public imagination, the party confounded the Establishment by taking the majority of the seats in the then West Pakistan in the 1970 Elections, barely three years after its founding. A disparate crew of dedicated leaders with widely differing backgrounds made up its hierarchy and gave it a consummate national colour, though its main electoral base was (and remains) the Provinces of Punjab and Sindh. By all means of measure this was a creditable performance, made possible by the political sagacity and leadership of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

On coming to power, Bhutto initially tried to follow the high ideals envisaged at the founding of the Party and implement that programme that he had outlined in his electoral campaign. In doing so he managed to achieve two totally different objectives, viz (1) the PPP gave a voice to the common man, particularly the worker class which had been stifled by the “robber baron” attitude of our industrialists during the Ayubian industrial reform and (2) by rampant nationalisation the PPP undercut the foundations of the burgeoning Pakistan economy and set it back almost two decades. Bhutto also managed to free corruption from the hands of the few and set patronage loose among the many, distributing the largesse among the party faithful, using that linkage to keep key people within the party faithful.

Mr. Bhutto started on the right foot, putting strong leaders from among his party to be the Provincial heads and honest ideologues to be in charge of key Ministries in the Federal Cabinet. Using a blend of youth and experience from the senior party cadres in the make-up of his primary leadership of the nation, he overcame seemingly impossible political, social and administrative problems. After all, he inherited a truncated Pakistan, with 93,000 POWs held in Indian Camps. He set in motion far reaching reforms, he had a mandate for change and he used it.

He was strongest in his grasp of foreign policy having been an outstanding Foreign Minister in Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s cabinet. His instinctive style and direct approach made for a lot of good friends among Heads of State and Government, particularly in the Third World. For starters he got back the POWs without making any significant concession to India. Pakistan, virtually isolated by the end of 1971, staged a tremendous comeback in international politics. By the end of the decade Pakistan was back in the international doghouse mainly because Bhutto’s hanging at the orchestration of his unelected successor (hand-picked by him as Army Chief) annoyed the large coterie of Bhutto friends among Heads of Government and State who proceeded to ostracize Gen Ziaul Haq and thus isolate Pakistan. In the decade of 70s, Bhutto remained at the centre of the world stage, Zia became an international pariah.

Bhutto’s downfall was largely of his own making, the democrat and intellectual in him losing to the ingrained suspicious nature stemming from his “wadera” background. As he rose in power, he became either jealous and/or exasperated of those of his closest associates who either tried to keep him on the party’s ideological line or seemed to develop their own power bases independent of his charisma. As he contrived to remove them from his side he fell increasingly in the hands of sycophants and supplicants who fed his ego by bringing him only that news and views that he wanted to hear. By removing JA Rahim, Mustafa Khar, Hanif Ramay, etc, by virtually sidelining Shaikh Rasheed, Meraj Khalid, Mumtaz Bhutto, etc and losing Hayat Sherpao to assassination, Bhutto became bereft of the hard-core of his party’s original stalwarts. In the end he had to fall back on the civil administration and in the last resort on the Army. He infinitely distrusted both institutions and they in turn lived upto his expectations, cooperating to overthrow him in 1977.

For the family, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s incarceration and hanging started a long decade in the wilderness, it also thrust Ms. Benazir into the political limelight much before she was ready. While Nusrat Bhutto, Ms Benazir’s mother, always remained Bhutto’s political consort, in the last year of his rule, power and patronage was increasingly concentrated in the hands of his third wife, Ms Husna (formerly Mrs Ahad). In any case Ms Nusrat Bhutto has never shown any independent political sagacity and her claim to fame was through the Bhutto marriage. Bhutto’s death restored the legality of Nusrat Bhutto’s status as the political heir to her husband’s legacy but Ms Benazir came through as a much more complete and credible political person, gradually taking over control of the Party as Co-Chairperson.

For sheer raw courage one will have to venture far and wide to see the likes of Ms Benazir. Remaining for long years under detention, forsaken by some fickle political allies, with the family widely dispersed, Ms Bhutto maintained her sanity and composure. As much as she bloomed into a good looking woman, she built an inner core of steel, the perfect Steel Magnolia, one with plenty of God-ordained charisma. For politics in any country of the world, this was a perfect combination and she has used it to good effect. She has easily surpassed her late father in universal recognition, the international media is enamoured with her. Through the decade of Zia’s rule, even as she was consigned to the cold because of the West’s primary pre-occupation with Afghanistan and the commensurate need to prop up the dictator, she planned and timed her comeback with intuitive planning. In 1986 she landed in Lahore, accompanied by a large contingent of the international media, to a tumultuous welcome the likes of which may never have been seen in the Sub-continent for sheer spontaneity. Mindful of the Marcos bungle of Senator Aquino’s comeback (when he was murdered at the Manila Airport), the Zia Regime with Mohammad Ali Khan Junejo as Prime Minister did not interfere with her historic cavalcades as it travelled through the countryside exciting the public imagination and drawing massive support.

In the flush of her triumphant return to Pakistan, Ms Benazir made a few crucial mistakes. It is one thing to have massive public support, it is another to convert that into electoral victory and even another to sustain that triumph in administering the country successfully. Without as much as the bat of an eyelash she repeated her father’s mistake, this time even before the Party went to the Polls. She discarded the two Mustafas, Khar and Jatoi, sidelined Miraj Khalid and Shaikh Rasheed while keeping Jam Sadiq Ali cooling his heels in UK. The talented cousin of her father, Mumtaz, and Abdul Hafeez Pirzada were already estranged. In short she shed her uncles and turned to either Johnny-come-latelies in the Party or those having their influence limited to their constituencies or even worse, only their nuisance values. While it is always necessary to bring in fresh blood, these must be closely vetted for their capability, credibility and loyalty. Added to this came the separate agenda of her husband, supposedly non-political, but having ambitions of his own in totally diverse areas.

While she won the Elections of November 1988 fair and square, she did not get an outright mandate. More crucially, she lost Punjab to a resurgent Nawaz Sharif who suddenly became the focus of all the Bhutto Opposition. To compound the mistake, she did not put a politically strong and viable Chief Minister in her electoral stronghold of Sindh. When she had the late Jam Sadiq to turn to, she chose pliable CMs who virtually gave over power to her husband, Asif Zardari. While the alliance with the MQM in Sindh was hardly likely to last, given bad faith on both the sides, another mistake was the falling out with the ANP in Sarhad Province. Without the MQM and ANP, the PPP was left totally alone, the Opposition, including Pakistan’s professional Opposition group, coalesced around Nawaz Sharif.

Ms Benazir’s three biggest mistakes were to launch endless attacks on the IJI Government in Punjab, particularly Nawaz Sharif, to start interfering with the Army’s postings and promotions after a good beginning and not to keep the sycophants and coterie around her husband under control. In the first instance she created a political halo around Nawaz Sharif, annointing him as the saviour of the intelligentsia and masses of Pakistan against the perceived and anticipated excesses of PPP. Those PPP activists freed from jails added to the drumbeat of fear. The Bhutto Opposition coalesced around the IJI leader and gave him national stature, he was literally created into a political colossus overnight by the anti-Nawaz campaign directed against him by the PPP. As regards the Army, Ms Bhutto was on more dangerous ground and in this she was badly served by two good men cast in the wrong appointments. Maj Gen (Retd) Nasirullah Khan Babar had made for an excellent Governor NWFP during the elder Bhutto’s rule, as the virtual Chief of Staff to the PM (Advisor on Political Affairs) to Ms Benazir he was totally miscast. Even in the Army he was known as a hands-on-leader, his staffwork was never a known strength. On the other hand, Maj Gen (Retd) Imtiaz Ali had been virtually Chief of Staff to the elder Bhutto as his Military Secretary (MS). As increasingly Bhutto had turned away from his Party hierarchy to rule the country, his MS had been coordinating political and administrative matters. In the younger Bhutto’s regime he was made Advisor on Defence Affairs. These two loyalists were both thus put in wrong slots, Babar being out of touch with reality in handling political and administrative problem and Imtiaz being intolerable to the Army Establishment as being suspect in attempting to complete his ambition by making a comeback as Army Chief. Even their routine moves were viewed with reservations by both the military and civil administration, they contributed nothing politically but ruffled feathers in the wrong places.

At the same time, Ms Benazir made some really odd choices. Happy Minwala, having no political or administrative background turned up as Ambassador-at-large, in her entourage she had a number of such people who did her image among the intelligentsia no good. She did realize that control in Sindh was slipping away from her but her husband prevented her from appointing any strongman like the late Jam Sadiq Ali as Sindh CM particularly when the gentleman was ready, willing and able. Above all lurid stories about financial shenanigans seemed to envelop her husband. While most accusations are probably false and others will fail to be proven for lack of evidence in Courts of law, the public perception grew that he and his father were lining their pockets, holding the marriage as hostage. There may not be evidence as such but it certainly has to have Asif Zardari’s intercession to have got Fauzi Ali Kazmi the Duty Free Shops concession, the proposed setting up of a vast private security company, a sanction of a US$ 20 million loan, etc and Fauzi was just one of Asif Zardari’s friends. Too many friends seemed to make too much money in too short a time, the evidence may not be there but then the Marcoses have stolen billions of US dollars and nobody can find them guilty on the evidence at hand. Similarly senior bankers were found drinking at the feet of this uncrowned king consort, dishing out instruction for loans and credits to only a favoured few, among them a Bhutto cousin. It is a fair bet that nine-tenths of the time these financial weasels may have misused Asif Zardari’s name. Ms Benazir may not have had anything to do with any of this and she may have been duped as has been done by other life partners to their spouses, but given the facts after the event does she really believe the protestations of innocence or is she just brazenly defying the facts, knowing that the Pakistani public has a notoriously short memory? She is an undisputedly one of the better leaders that this country has produced, for her sake and for that of the country one hopes that she will put her own house in order.

The 20 months of her rule is marked with failure mainly because she had set free hopes that was beyond her to accomplish and because the Establishment was most uncooperative. As Prime Minister she seemed to become seemingly arrogant and aloof, even to the most diehard among her party’s inner circle. She created Committees to submerge those among her Party faithful that she never wanted to hear about or from, no solid programme emerged except to try and undo the years that the PPP faithful had spent out in the wilderness. While it was right that she should assuage their bruises, it could not be done at the cost of public credibility in government. Above all, she was understandably soft on India. It had been widely rumoured that during the years of darkness the Bhutto family had used Indian diplomatic bags for communications purposes, if so then the Indian intelligence agencies would have used that knowledge to good effect. If this is a fact, this was a most serious lapse on the part of the Bhuttos because it would seem to give the Indians an open-ended access to our leadership hierarchy at the highest level, depending upon the muck available it also gives them unlimited possibilities of influencing their decisions. To add to this brother Murtaza Bhutto had openly professed leadership of Al-Zulfikar Organization (AZO) that had been taken over by India’s Research and Analytical Wing (RAW) when it lost favour in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Despite the botch-up of government attempts to lay out the available evidence showing the Indian hand controlling AZO, the fact of the matter is that it is a fact, it is now totally an instrument of RAW. All this is damning for any leader who aspires to be the leader of Pakistan, if the intelligence agencies really have such evidence she cannot ever hope to be PM of Pakistan ever. Unless the disputes with India are solved, the Armed Forces will find some excuse to exclude her.

For an educated and intellectual person, Ms Benazir does not seem to have outgrown her childhood. She loves to play cloak and dagger games in which she in cast as the sole heroine, this is the Joan of Arc syndrome. For a former Prime Minister to take part in car chases, changing of cars to avoid surveillance and other such acts is not acceptable behaviour. Before she became PM, one could gloss over such antics given the totalitarian nature of late Zia’s rule but this is now a functioning democracy and one expects greater maturity and grace from the lady. She must also make better choice of her aides, getting over the elder Bhutto’s known penchant for “shooting” messengers bringing bad news, her inner kitchen cabinet must be able to tell her about home truths without fear of summary dismissal. She has to choose people who believe in her but will not jump into a well simply because she says so, unfortunately she seems to believe that to question her analysis is disloyalty. Similarly her moves towards the Army is basically naive, the Army has good reason to question her good faith towards them. For a country like Pakistan, this is a most serious lack of confidence. Even if there seems to be tension between Nawaz Sharif and the Army, the powers-that-be that orchestrated her downfall in 1990, distant uncles Asghar Khan and Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, were also among them. Today, she has an uneasy alliance with her distant uncles in trying to bring down Nawaz Sharif but she does not have the good wishes of the Army. She calls his government as undemocratic, one based on electoral rigging, conveniently forgetting that Uncle Jatoi was the Caretaker PM and Uncle Khar in his Cabinet as one of the chief Bhutto opponents when the 1990 Elections took place. Rigging may have been done, for that Jatoi and Khar should be held culpable by her, by associating with them she undercuts the credibility of her accusations on that score.

Ms Bhutto has not done the nation any good by her actions of the last month or so. One can understand that she is desperate and being shoved into a corner has to fight back, but the line she has chosen seems to have been orchestrated by New Delhi. In the first instance by launching her Nov 18 Long March she totally diverted international public opinion away from Kashmir which was building up because of increased Indian atrocities in Kashmir. It was the wrong march at the wrong time. One has to absorb sometimes punishment in the national interest and her choice of timing undercut Pakistan’s credibility on the issue of human rights and values just when we seemed to be gathering international momentum. In the second instance, her reaction to Babri Masjid seemed to exonerate the Indians and lay the blame firmly at the doorstep of the Pakistani Government, a rather strange stance for any Pakistani to take at this time and totally divorced from reality. Knowing that she has international media recognition and her words would carry weight, she has refused to singularly blame the Indians for the desecration. On the contrary she has put the Pakistan Government on the spot by accusing Government ministers of bulldozing temples in Pakistan. The Indian propaganda machine could not have done a more merciless skewering of the Pakistan national position on the Babri Masjid. What our mobs managed to do by their ill-advised emotional outburst has been given the seal of credibility by Ms Benazir, it may even let the Indians escape international approbation. National interest to her may be secondary to personal interest, in the case she seems to be rescuing the Indians from an untenable position. “Was this in Mistress Bhutto” to paraphrase Shakespeare a little bit from Cleopatra, “well done?”.

The Pakistan Peoples Party is virtually the only party in the country with a national character, the Muslim League has lost ground heavily in Sindh and Balochistan and except for Punjab is without a credible base anywhere else. Even after a decade plus of Martial Law the PPP emerged as the single largest party of Pakistan despite great inroads made in its organization by the repression let loose upon them. Its biggest problem is that its rank and file cadres have had the misfortune of being lorded over by poor leadership and have never been allowed up the ladder themselves. Some upper level senior cadres in the hierarchy left the Party in frustration and the vacuum has never been filled. Less than credible leaders, with ambition to line their own pockets only, have come to the fore. Without doubt the PPP amalgamates the maximum quantum of intelligentsia and the masses in a giant national melting pot containing all races, religions, etc, infinitely more than any other party. It still remains the most potent national organisation but its most potent assets are the Bhuttos. Ms Benazir Bhutto gives the PPP credibility as a political forum, without her (and/or the family) the Party does not have much electoral strength. Democratic political organisations should have greater roots than rely on a single personality or family. Ms Nusrat Bhutto’s fulminations do not help, to quote, “The Bhuttos are born to rule”, unquote. The Bhuttos do not suffer potential rivals easily, take the example of Uncle Mustafa Khar in Punjab as well as the Jatois and the Makhdooms of Hala in Sindh.

Ms Benazir Bhutto certainly needs to take a journey, not on one Long March but many symbolic Long Marches, none of the Chinese Communist Party kind. The present series of Long Marches is the Wrong March done at the wrong time. At this crucial time in our economic and geo-political circumstances we do not need domestic political crisis, Ms Bhutto seems determined to provoke thus. This will damage the national fabric irretrievably at a time when we need the greatest national unity. At the same time the Nawaz Sharif Government must not close doors to dialogue on any issue except the change of government. Ms Bhutto has gathered together a disparate crew of opposition leaders who have proven integrity and loyalty, the government must compromise to ensure that they are not permanently estranged. Ms Bhutto must understand that if she wants to achieve her purpose of national government she must have national dialogue.

Ms Bhutto must first set her own family house in order, setting at rest doubts about her husband and brother, though for widely differing reasons. It would be too much to ask her to separate from Asif Zardari but she must separate him from using influence for his own and his cronies benefit to the detriment of the Party. This can be done by a public announcement asking the public to report any indiscretion to a Special Ombudsman reporting directly to the President. In the case of Murtaza Bhutto, she must understand that by continuing to support terrorism post-Zia he has gone out of the national pale and he has to be publicly ex-communicated or whatever, nobody in the Armed Forces is likely to stomach his presence in Pakistan.

The Party’s organization must get her undivided attention. At the moment, there are too many feudals having Party affiliation in gross contrast to PPP’s stated ideology which militates against feudal overlordship, in short the Party has to practice what it preaches. It must seriously implement land reforms and carry out distribution of surplus lands to the landless when in power. Party cadres who have given endless sacrifices for the sake of the Party have to be rewarded in supersession of the opportunists who have infiltrated the PPP. At the same time she must show mature judgment in choosing the provincial leadership, Jahangir Badr’s choice as President PPP Punjab being a case in point. When there are people of the calibre of Miraj Khalid, Aitzaz Ahsan, Salman Taseer, etc available why she should turn to the Badrs of PPP one cannot simply understand!

During her rule her economic policies pragmatically continued the trend set by PML’s Mohammad Khan Junejo about privatisation in stark contrast to the original PPP manifesto, but she could not break loose from the shackles of bureaucracy as much as Nawaz Sharif has done. Her economic performance was good, particularly in the inception of the Board of Investment (BOI) but she erred by putting a bureaucrat in charge instead of a politician. Where she could have taken risks she opted for caution, her pre-occupations with trying to overwhelm Nawaz Sharif hamstrung her. Failing to effect revolutionary economic reforms she failed to provide the dynamics that is the essence of modern politics, constant economic changes to ameliorate the conditions of the masses.

If Ms Bhutto aspires to be PM again she must unambiguously clarify her relationship with India and her predilection to consort with known enemies of Pakistan. She gave a medal to US Congressman Stephen Solarz who opposed Pakistan with every nerve and fibre of his legislative body, he is probably the arbiter of more damage to US-Pakistan relationship than anybody else. She refused to censure Palestinian Yasser Arafat even when he seemed to oppose Pakistan’s stance on Kashmir vis-a-vis India despite Pakistan’s long and constant support for the Palestinian cause. Above all she does not seem to have a committed position for Kashmir except for the most basic political lip-service reasons. She could have easily exploited her international media recognition to expose the continuing Indian atrocities and brutality. The overall public perception seems to be that she is soft on India. While good relations with India may be certainly something to aspire for, no leader of Pakistan having the national interest at heart can afford to seem to compromise Pakistan’s stance with solutions of our mutual problems. If a vote were held in the Indian electorate to choose a PM for Pakistan, she would get a landslide victory? Knowing that the Indian public hardly has Pakistan’s interests at heart, one may well ask why?

Ms Bhutto has all the attributes of a national leader including the important factor of great international recognition and acceptability. She is perhaps the most charismatic national leader after the Quaid-e-Azam, even eclipsing her late father. She is intelligent, well educated and has charm. Her removal by Presidential fiat in 1990 seems to have taught her humility and the need to cooperate with like-minded parties and individuals other than those that toe her line only rather than try to go it all alone. Above all, she followed an excellent policy in enhancing and preserving the freedom of the Press, today she reaps the benefit in spades as almost the whole English language media supports her firmly. That she has courage no one can doubt as well as the ability to bear persecution with grace. Ms Bhutto is a dynamic Pakistani asset if she sets her mind to it and does not work under the influence of vested interests. She has a tremendous vote bank, the solidity on which can build a greater electoral base. Despite inexperience in the handling of the country’s administration and the machinations of those among her party who had their own private agendas of making money, her reign was better than average for the most part.

Having all these assets why has she become so desperate that forsaking the national interest that she is resorting to stratagems like the Long March? First of all the Government has not given her breathing space by the filing of many References against her and the continued incarceration of her husband, what choice does she have but to fight back? More importantly, at a most crucial moment in the history of the world she finds herself with no role to play in the momentous geo-political changes that are taking place on the world stage. Above all, the far reaching Nawaz-initiated economic reforms that are presently in a transition stage and the massive public sector programme in the works are a matter of concern to her because she realizes that as the economic benefits start to flow to the people a couple of years later Nawaz Sharif may become unreachable politically in the subsequent election. The fact that the PPP is nothing without Bhutto but Bhutto is still a tangible asset without PPP should also be a cause of concern. The force of personalities becoming an overwhelming force invariably leads to absolute power and fascism. That is a sad commentary on the state of the PPP, one of the two main political parties of Pakistan.

The PPP should concentrate on re-organising itself according to its revised ideology and the aspirations of the masses that give it tremendous support. It must get rid of the opportunists among its midst and create credible shadow Committees that will form the plans along which they will govern at every tier and level if they should again come to power. Above all, they should be mature in their Opposition, not oppose the Government only for the sake of opposing. If they have to keep the government accountable they must be credible about objectivity. The Party came to power too quickly after its inception and it had to undergo ideological changes once in government, the next time around the Party came to power in 1988 after it had been out in the cold too long. A political party with about 38% of the electorate backing it has to have national character, it must not impair its credibility by a deliberate campaign of disinformation and misinformation fed to the masses, that is demeaning to the concept of democracy. That is a fascist tendency that must be avoided because it only harms national integrity in the long run. What will the PPP rule if Pakistan disintegrates?

The PPP should understand that the Long March was (and is) wrong, it had an extra-constitutional angle that was not conducive to democracy. In the context of Pakistani politics it has failed because the people are not willing and without their will no government can be changed. There was no massive support as envisaged by the PDA (and wrongly anticipated by the Government). The PPP is a very potent force for democracy in Pakistan but when out of power it resorts to rather undemocratic means to make life miserable for the incumbents. Invariably the PPP thus shoots itself in the foot. Who was it who once said, to quote, “we have met the enemy and it is us”? If they look in the mirror, the PPP might find their own worst enemies. This may be a sad commentary on them but given the potential of this national party it is a great tragedy for Pakistan.

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