M.D. Nalapat
Manipal, India — After the Feb. 18
"peaceful" general elections in Pakistan, where "moderate"
candidates overwhelmingly trounced their "extremist" rivals, most
international commentators have agreed with the Pakistani analysts nesting in
think tanks across the United States and elsewhere that the country's slide
into chaos will decelerate and may even be reversed.
No less an expert on third world elections
than U.S. Senator John Kerry has pronounced the Pakistan poll to have
"credibility and legitimacy," a sentiment apparently shared by his
colleague, Joe Biden. In fact, the election results indicate that the poll was
less than fair, although conditions on the ground clearly made the manipulation
less than completely effective.
While the Pakistan People's Party -- which
was expected abroad to secure a majority on the basis of the
"sympathy" vote following the killing of Benazir Bhutto -- got 87 of
the 287 contested seats, Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League won just 66, a
performance at variance with ground reality, which had indicated the party
would register a much better performance.
Given the dodgy reputation of Bhutto's
widower and newly anointed PPP leader, A.A. Zardari -- plus the fact that her
visible eagerness to do the bidding of Washington had cost her much popularity
in a society that is, after the Palestinian territories, one of the most
anti-United States in the world -- the PPP ought to have come second to
Sharif's PML(N), instead of emerging as the largest single party. Clearly, and
contra-intuitively, the fact that the PPP has not-so-secretly been in parleys
with Musharraf helped rather than hurt, despite the loathing with which most
Pakistanis regard their head of state.
The Bhutto family's faithful political
party was enabled to prevail over that run by rival Sharif, but not by enough
to have a reasonable chance of forming a stable coalition. Joining hands with
the party of settlers from India, the 19-strong Muttahida Qaumi Movement, would
risk an erosion in the PPP's core base among Sindhis, while the National Awami
Party, which won 10 seats in the face of both army as well as jihadi
intimidation in Pakistan's northwest, would find a tie-up with Zardari
uncomfortable.
Incidentally, the NAP's spectacular rise
from zero seats to 10 can be explained by its anti-U.S. political stance, while
the collapse of the religious right's Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, or MAM, from 59
seats in 2002 to just three this time can be substantially traced to its
backing of "U.S. poodle" Pervez Musharraf rather than any electoral
disenchantment with its core ideology of Wahabbism.
While Sharif may, under U.S. pressure,
agree to a "grand alliance" between the PML(N) and the PPP, this
would be a short-term tactical move designed to ensure the exit of arch foe
Musharraf, who today has only the Bush administration as his prop, having lost
the army to the Punjabi lobby. A PPP-PML(N) coalition government would be
uneasy at best, for both partners would need to feed on the other's base to strengthen
themselves.
The other option -- the one Musharraf would
favor -- would be an alliance between the PPP and the erstwhile ruling party,
the PML(Q),which has won just 38 seats despite clandestine backing from the
government. Together with most of the 27 independents, as well as some smaller
parties, such a coalition would be more cohesive than a PPP-PML(N) construct,
and would command a comfortable majority even if the MQM and the NAP decided to
remain in the opposition, together with the PML(N).
However, such a linkage would mean the
death of the numerous corruption cases and enquiries into Zardari's opulent
lifestyle, which has thus far centered on his rural fief in Sindh as well as
palatial residences in Dubai and London. In this formation Musharraf would
still have some say, and could be expected to use this to intensify probes
against Nawaz Sharif. Sharif's family has come from nowhere to become probably
the wealthiest in Pakistan, an ascent that began in the 198Os when military
strongman Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq was chief martial law administrator of the
country.
Nawaz Sharif is trusted by neither the
United States nor by the non-Punjabi component of the military. Washington
seems him as an unreliable partner, while non-Punjabis correctly identify him
as being a provincial chieftain committed to the continuation of Punjabi
supremacy in Pakistan. However, his credible performance -- in the face of what
seems to have been an organized effort to ensure a PPP/ PML(Q) surge -- may
result in pressure from the United States to combine with Zardari, to form a
coalition that looks strong in numbers but which would have fatal flaws in its
chemistry.
Democracy in Pakistan would be better
served by the PML(N), the NAP and the MQM forming a sizeable and effective
opposition bloc in the National Assembly, and calling for such popular measures
as the reinstatement of judges sacked by Musharraf, especially the Punjab
favorite, former Chief Justice Iftikhar Choudhury. Such a move is unlikely to
sit well with Zardari, who sees in the judge a mortal enemy who was eager to
send him back to prison.
Only a supreme act of self-abnegation by
the PPP leader, such as the handover of the prime minister post to the upright
Aitzaz Ahsan, can enable the PPP to face the political challenge sure to be
mounted by a resurgent Nawaz Sharif. In South Asia, such a sacrifice of power
is rare. Only when forced by circumstances to return to the sidelines -- as
Sonia Gandhi was in 2004 -- do the region's politicians surrender a shot at
high office.
Neither the Zardari-led PPP nor the tatty
band of religious zealots backing Pervez Musharraf has the will or the ability
to change the ground reality in Pakistan. The minds of most of the young are
taken over by a ferocious ideology of hatred toward the United States and the
West generally, caused by images of NATO troops occupying Iraq and Afghanistan.
Those in Washington that so regularly call
on Pakistan to "do more" in the War on Terror need to appreciate that
it is in fact their own policies that have become the most effective recruiters
for the international jihad.
-(Professor M.D. Nalapat is
vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and
professor of geopolitics at Manipal University. ©Copyright M.D. Nalapat.)
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