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Crisis blows over for now

President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to withdraw from declaring an Emergency after giving it more than serious consideration for several hours over Wednesday and Thursday shows that American influence aside, Pakistan has changed so much in the last four months that a military ruler can no longer blithely resort to coercive options.

The Pakistan President has the powers to proclaim an emergency under Article 232 of the Constitution, if he is “satisfied” that the country’s security is threatened by “war or external aggression, or by an internal disturbance…”

Through Wednesday night and part of Thursday, prominent figures in the Musharraf regime, including the Minister of State for Information Tariq Azeem, pointed to statements by U.S. officials of carrying out unilateral military strikes against alleged Al-Qaeda safe havens in the border regions of Pakistan, as posing the threat of external aggression. They also pointed to the spate of suicide bombings in Pakistan, including two in the capital, as posing an equally grave internal threat, and said that this was enough reason for the government to consider the Emergency option available to it in the Constitution.

But with President Musharraf neck-deep in political troubles, the real motivation for the government to mull over this option seemed to lie in the uncertainty that surrounds his plan to seek re-election in uniform from the sitting parliament and provincial assemblies in the weeks before this electoral colleges finishes its term.

“President Musharraf needs some extraordinary powers to deal with his re-election. He thinks that by using the extraordinary powers given to him by the Constitution he will be able to contain any problem he is facing in the domestic political arena, and help him win the election,” said Hassan Askari Rizvi, a Lahore-based political analyst.

Two weeks after their not-so-secret meeting in Abu Dhabi, it is not clear if President Musharraf has managed to secure the guaranteed support of the Pakistan People’s Party leader Benazir Bhutto for the re-election. Even if he has, the plan will run into stormy legal weather with a challenge likely in the Supreme Court.

Moreover, talk of a deal between President Musharraf and Ms. Bhutto has soured his relations with his main political cushion, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Q), which holds the votes for his re-election. The PML (Q) fears it is about to be dumped for the PPP. Sections within the ruling party are demanding that if Ms. Bhutto is going to be allowed back into Pakistan, so should Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (N). Some party members have even demanded that the President seek re-election as a civilian. Some have threatened to join hands with Mr. Sharif.

Meanwhile, President Musharraf’s bete noire, PML (N) leader Nawaz Sharif has moved the court to facilitate his return to the country after seven years in exile.

But the domestic reaction, as relayed by private television channels, to an Emergency as a strategy to deal with these difficulties was so severe that it may have been one of the main factors in the President’s change of plan within a day, analysts and political leaders said.

“The situation in Pakistan has changed a lot in the last few months. There is now a confidence in political groups that if they act collectively they can bring change, and that is what we saw in the last 18 hours,” said Dr. Rizvi.

According to PML (N) Information Secretary Ahsan Iqbal, the government was considering an emergency only to block the return of exiled party leader Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif.

The two have petitioned the Supreme Court to facilitate their “unhindered” entry into Pakistan. The Court began hearing arguments on the maintainability of the petitions on Thursday.

But, he said, “in their present mood, the people would not tolerate” such a step by the rulers.

“Especially after this struggle by the lawyers [for the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary], the whole nation will rise in revolt. The people will revolt, the lawyers will revolt, civil society will revolt and the opposition parties will revolt,” he said.

According to Aaj TV anchor Nusrat Javed, no military ruler can take Pakistan’s civil society for granted anymore.

“The defeatism is no longer there in civil society. The mood in the country has changed so much that President Musharraf is increasingly losing the option of using certain coercive provisions that are available to him,” said Mr. Javed.

It was perhaps sensing this new “mood” that while the government in recent months held out a delaration of an Emergency as a constitutional option available to it, President Musharraf and other senior leaders of the government went out of their way to say that the situation in the country did not warrant such a drastic step. Analysts said the serious consideration that President Musharraf appears to have given it on Wednesday showed his political desperation.

“It has strengthened the impression that he is without any political levers to manage his political affairs,” said Rasul Baksh Rais, who teaches political science the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

He said an Emergency would have “energised the Opposition, and given it another cause” to rally against the government after the row over the Chief Justice issue.

Dr. Rais said that although President Musharraf had tried to frame Pakistan’s current political situation as a battle between extremists and moderates, there had been few takers for this. “The real issue is that he has lost his credibility.”

The political scientist predicted a dramatic change in the political scene in Pakistan if Mr. Sharif, backed by the Supreme Court, returned to the country, including a burial to the “deal” between Ms. Bhutto and President Musharraf.

“If [Nawaz Sharif] returns, he is going to pull crowds. Benazir Bhutto is not going to surrender the political arena to him. She is going to jump into the fray, and this competition for the political street will shake the centre of political gravity, and take it away from President Musharraf,” he said.

In the 14 or so hours that rumours of an emergency ebbed and flowed through Pakistan, one of the key questions being asked was what role Washington played in the whole episode. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke to President Musharraf a few hours after the rumours took hold.

Observers said that this too may have helped the Pakistan ruler withdraw from the Emergency option, especially as the threat of U.S. aggression was being used to justify the measure.

“Although I have no definite information, I would prefer to believe that Ms. Rice discussed this issue with President Musharraf, and I would tend to think the U.S. used its influence over him,” said Mr. Javed.

A recently enacted U.S. legislation ties security aid to Pakistan to a progress towards democracy among other things, and the mood in the U.S. Congress too is not as supportive as it used to be.

Dr. Rizvi said the legislation meant there was more pressure on Washington to be critical of any retrogressive step by President Musharraf. But according to him, it was far from clear if the U.S. would abandon him if he were to resurrect the Emergency card at some point.

He predicted that in that eventuality, “the U.S. would be critical but will not turn hostile” as it still needs the Pakistan leader for the war in Afghanistan.

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