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?
The Return of MQ Prime Minister-in-Waiting?
Former Caretaker PM Moeen Qureshi, flew into Pakistan in the early hours of April 14, 1994, almost 6 months to the day after he handed over power to the elected PM, Ms Benazir Bhutto. For those addicted to conspiracy theories, his visit seems to have been synchronized with that of US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott as well as carefully orchestrated to invite attention. It raises a pertinent question, what is MQ doing here at this time? For the Ms Benazir regime, this is certainly not a happy period. Given that a very bad precedent had been set in July 1993 for future Constitutional sleight-of-hands by forcing out an elected PM who commanded a substantial Parliamentary majority, speculation is rife that MQ is here to personally gauge the situation and if the political environment is conducive for a “national” government, indicate to the powers-that-be his availability to be of service to Pakistan in taking our chestnuts out of the ever-spreading quagmire. Unlike last time, when his credentials were only that of an international technocrat and he was an unknown quantity to the public-at-large in the field of governing third world countries, MQ’s Curriculum Vitae (CV) is now much more credible for any concerted sales effort by vested interests. Whether anyone likes it or not, there are many in this country who believe that an interim period of national government is necessary and for them MQ remains a very distinct possibility as a PM in-waiting. It is also true that no political government can survive a nuclear “rollback”, at least publicly, MQ has no such problem in delivering.
Less than 180 days after MQ handed over the reins to Ms Benazir, Pakistan is in much deeper trouble economically, politically, socially and externally than when he took over from Mian Nawaz Sharif. Some of Pakistan’s problems were inherited by Ms Benazir as they were inherited by Mian Nawaz Sharif before her. To cast a broad brush in apportioning blame on PPP alone would not be fair, however on one important count Ms Benazir’s PPP surpasses Mian Nawaz Sharif’s PML (N) by miles, most of her problems are either self-created or occasioned out of designed neglect. Caretaker PM Moeen Qureshi stemmed the rot that arose out of the civilian coup that had paralysed the Federal Government. By the time he left the country was on its way to a more or less stable economic condition with hopes for building adequate foreign exchange reserves. The present situation may not be one of extreme economic apprehension despite the fact that the price of atta is slowly edging past the reach of the common urbanite. However, it is nowhere as rosy as the government’s rhetoric presents. On paper, the country’s foreign exchange reserves has gone up to US$ 1.9 billion, unfortunately it seems the same bureaucrats who served Mian Nawaz Sharif “loyally” do not seem to be informing the PM that almost US$ 1.5 billion of these so-called “Reserves” are short term borrowings by different government and semi-government corporations. To test MQ’s intellectual honesty, one could well ask this technocrat what is his analysis of the state of country’s present foreign exchange reserves?