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The wrong march-II

Who was it who once said, “We have met the enemy and it is us”? If they look in the mirror, the PPP might find their own worst enemies.

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 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 were 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.

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 is 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 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 are 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. 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 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. In the first instance by launching her November 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 sometimes absorb 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. In this 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 People’s 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 organisation by the repression let loose upon it. 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 asset 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. “The Bhuttos are born to rule”, etc. 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 this. 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 excommunicated or whatever. Nobody in the Armed Forces is likely to stomach his presence in Pakistan.

 Party’s organisation 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 over lordship. 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 suppression 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 Meraj Khalid, Aitzaz Ahsan, Salman Taseer, etc available, why she should turn to the Badrs of PPP one simply cannot 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 preoccupation 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 condition of the masses.

Ms Bhutto made mistakes like giving 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. 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.

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-i-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 of which can help 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, 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 realises 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 the PPP should also be a cause for concern. The force of personalities becoming an overwhelming force invariably lends 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 reorganising 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 per cent of the electorate backing 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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