The Road Ahead
As we approach election year 2007 (or will it be early 2008), the Musharraf regime has to decide very soon what political garb it has to cast itself in to fight the elections successfully. While there is no meltdown of the government, if what we read in the media and hear at private gatherings from neutral observers is true than in the run-up to general elections we are headed for political in-fighting within the government coalition, with every partner holding out to get the best possible deal for themselves. That is to be expected, with each constituent utilising this opportunity for crying for more seats than its share, before deciding upon the consensus candidate for each National and Provincial Assembly seat, mostly at the last minute. PML (Q) is a heterogeneous outfit that will be beset from within to an extent, particularly in the Seraiki belt, it will still be the majority party in Punjab, based namely on the strength of individual candidates rather than party affiliation. However both PPP and PML(N) will also do well in their strongholds. In Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan. PML(Q) is almost non-existent without official manipulation We are in for an era of backroom politics, may not be exactly smoke-filled and whisky–laden but there will be a potent power-play nevertheless.
Divided We Stand
Events over the past week or so are witness to why the uniform is so important to the President, the ruling PML is a “democratic” house of cards held together by the authority of Pervez Musharraf as the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Pakistan Army. While not less than 70% of the PML (and allied) parliamentarians have individual political clout in their own constituencies and thus legitimacy on their own steam, almost 30% would never have made it into the Assembles had it not been for those in charge of political manipulations in the ISI and MI, directly under the direction of the COAS. An alliance was cobbled together in 2002 to give legitimacy to our democratic pretensions, if the system has survived until now it is only because the ISI and MI remain Swords of Damocles, without discounting of course the personality of the President as COAS. Seeing the PML edifice in danger, Musharraf called all the faction heads to an enlarged meeting of the PML’s heads on Monday May 16, 2005, ostensibly to discuss the present economic and geo-political situation, mainly to give the “loyal” Parliamentarians a pep talk and paper over the chinks and cracks appearing in the body armour of Pakistan’s ruling party.
Changing Times
Pakistan’s constitutional crisis will soon come to a head, in the meantime no business will be transacted in the houses of Parliament, which is about par for the democratic course anyway. An 11-member Committee comprising both Coalition and Opposition representatives (five members each) was due to assemble to sort out the LFO impasse. Opposed tooth and nail by the Opposition, Ch Shujaat Hussain resigned as Chairman and gave way to Ch Amir Hussain, Speaker of the National Assembly. Very coincidentally and thanks to Yashwant Sinha’s “pre-emptive strike” gaffe, there were dramatic developments because Vajpayee’s sudden offer on talks on all issues including Kashmir, whether the India-Pakistan de-freeze goes any distance is still a matter of conjecture that depends upon the prevailing mood of India’s Parliament, there are enough mixed signals going around to confuse even the most adroit and knowledgeable of analysts. While fully engaged in domestic and external issues, what are the primary lessons we have learnt from Iraq i.e. if we have learnt any lessons at all?
The first lesson must be that things are not what they seem to be, that perception must not obscure actual facts. The Coalition went to war, ostensibly to (1) emasculate Iraq’s capacity to wage war using its suspected cache of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMDs) (2) to effect regime change and (3) to destroy a perceived nexus between WMDs and international terrorism. Most muslims, and primarily Arabs, felt that these objectives were simply camouflage meant to hide the Coalition real aims i.e. (1) seize Iraq’s rich resources of oil wealth and (2) establish a long-term presence in Iraq that would facilitate dominance of the oil-rich region. The Coalition felt that the “liberation of Iraq” would cause a spontaneous outpouring of gratitude in the streets, on the other hand the Arabs hoped that the Iraqis would keep fighting a guerilla war long after actual combat operations were over, they did not expect the war to end so suddenly. Both assumptions were proved incorrect. The Coalition’s pronounced successful strategy was a high-tech “shock and awe” cataclysmic strike followed by a blitzkrieg cutting through the Iraqi Army like knife through butter, the blitzkrieg did happen but only against token resistance, most of the fighting was done by individual units and stray Fedayeen groupings. It is now clear that commanders up the line had been bought over by a combination of fear and the green of US Dollars, Tommy Franks may be clairvoyant but even he could not know that all highways and bridges would be usable and that not even one stretch of road would be mined. The war can be labeled as one of “shock and stealth”, right upto capturing Baghdad without a fight, far earlier than expected. With very few US troops available for policing, the resultant looting has been catastrophic for Iraqi society. In retrospect it is a good thing that the much-promised Iraqi warfare remained a figment of imagination, the ensuing destruction would have been meaningless in relation to the end result.
Trading Dark Horses
The process of the General Elections of Oct 12, 2002 was completed by Saturday Nov 2. Due to meet on Friday Nov 8 the National Assembly (NA) was postponed for a week at the request of some political parties to give them some time to shore up their coalition arrangements. A proposed alliance led by PPP-P and MMA is pitted almost equally against the grouping led by PML (Q). With the bogey of “hung Parliament” hanging in the air, one doubts whether a stable government could be formed in the Centre. Both the PPP-P (which privately had called for a delay) and the MMA immediately condemned the postponement, labeling it as a machination of the incumbent military government trying to contrive a PML (Q)-led government coalition.
Who are the main players in the power game? PML (Q)’s Ch Shujaat Hussain with the largest number of MNAs must be counted as a major player, followed closely by PPP-P’s self-exiled leader Ms Benazir Bhutto (and her incarcerated spouse Mr Asif Zardari). One must not forget Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the Jamaat-e-Islami chief who is the chief architect/planner of MMA’s strong showing, MQM’s self-exiled Altaf Hussain in London or the Jeddah-based exiled brothers Mian Nawaz Sharif and Mian Shahbaz Sharif of PML (N). The name of the game is acquisition of power, somehow! What is of consequence is that all the political parties are talking to each other i.e. except for PML (Q) and PML (N), an anomaly that needs to be corrected. And who are the contenders for the prized post of PM? The horses in contention are Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali of PML (Q), Makhdoom Amin Fahim of PPP-P and MMA’s Maulana Fazlur Rahman. While PML (Q)’s Khurshid Kasuri and Humayun Akhtar cannot be ruled out as possible choices, compromise candidates can be Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao of PPP (S) or Hamid Nasir Chatha of PML (J). In this world of horse-trading, is there a dark horse somewhere?