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Waiting for Benazir Bhutto

— PHOTO: AP

PPP activists carry a billboard in Karachi on Tuesday in preparation of Benazir Bhutto’s anticipated return on October 18.

An application form for aspirants to the post of Prime Minister of Pakistan is the latest joke doing the rounds on the Internet. The form asks applicants to choose from a list of reasons for applying: “to escape court trial; to make more money; to grossly misuse power; to serve the people [if you choose this, attach certificate of sanity from a recognised, very well-known psychiatrist]; don’t know.” Forward this to friends in the Pakistan People’s P arty if you want to see them squirm.

Benazir Bhutto’s controversial deal on October 5 with President Pervez Musharraf, backed by the American and British governments, has left her party and its supporters who count themselves as the last liberal-moderate-secular bastion of resistance against military rule shell-shocked ahead of her expected return to Pakistan after eight years of self-exile on October 18 — if the plan is still intact after President Musharraf’s “advice” to her on Wednesday asking her to put it off until his own election is legitimised by the Supreme Court.

In the run-up to the presidential election, Ms. Bhutto and many party stalwarts justified talks with the regime as negotiations for a “smooth return to democracy.”

But even her staunchest supporters are stunned that the final “package of reforms” contains little other than the withdrawal of corruption cases against her, her husband, and confidantes from her time in power.

The deal, finalised after nearly a year of secret negotiations, came in the form of the National Reconciliation Ordinance 2007 signed in by President Musharraf a day before his election. In return for the amnesty, the PPP legitimised the election by not resigning from Parliament and the provincial assemblies as the other opposition parties had done. The PPP abstained from the process to save face, a walkout by its parliamentarians from the National Assembly giving gloss to a token protest.

There is much outrage that Ms. Bhutto entered into such a self-serving agreement, and the media, especially private television channels, are mauling her daily. Some pro-Benazir commentators have put up a spirited defence. Writing in The Nation, Hussain Haqqani said the cases against Ms. Bhutto had been hanging over her head for years without investigators unable to find the evidence to secure even a single conviction. It was now up to the people to decide if those charges were true, he said, pointing to the inclusion of the words “politically motivated” in the ordinance as an admission by the regime that the cases were nothing but vendetta.

But the fight has gone out of most of the others. With a general election next, PPP seniors are gloomily calling the deal a “setback” to the party’s image and that even Ms. Bhutto’s planned return next week to take charge of the situation may not help reverse the situation.

“One way to look at this is that October 18 [the day of Ms. Bhutto’s planned arrival] may change things. But I ask myself if the NRO has not already changed the complexion of October 18,” said a PPP veteran.

The NRO withdraws all corruption charges filed against those in public office before October 12, 1999, the day General Musharraf seized power from Nawaz Sharif. This benefits Ms. Bhutto, her family and friends, cases against whom were filed by the Sharif government. It also provides for withdrawal of criminal cases registered from 1986 to 1999 against political activists. The principal beneficiary of this provision is another Musharraf ally, the Karachi-based Muttahida Quami Movement, thousands of whose cadres were charged with criminal offences during that period. The ordinance also includes a change in election laws so that results, once declared, cannot be tampered with.

Ms. Bhutto described this as “stage 1” of the understanding, and said that “stage 2,” after the presidential election, would bring more democracy-oriented concessions. But the PPP is only too aware that while it helped in the election of President Musharraf, “stage 2” is up in the air. The party’s fortunes, including the power-sharing part of the deal, and the U.S.-British hope that the moderate PPP will provide President Musharraf the enabling atmosphere he needs to tackle extremism in Pakistan and prosecute the “war on terror,” now depend on its performance in the coming parliamentary election.

Meanwhile, the PPP must defend itself against accusations that Ms. Bhutto participated in an Anglo-American plan to keep General Musharraf in power, refusing to join hands with an opposition alliance for democracy for a deal to save her own neck and that gave him the lifejacket he was looking for.

It is unclear how much of the anger against Ms. Bhutto has seeped out of newspaper columns, television studios, and the drawing rooms of the chattering classes into the hearts and minds of the “common people” that the party describes as its real constituency. But PPP workers sound pessimistic.

“If the NRO had included the cases against [Pakistan Muslim League (N) leader] Nawaz Sharif, or political activists in Balochistan, or at least done something for the disappeared [people missing after being taken into custody by intelligence agencies], then we had something to take to the people. But not this,” lamented the PPP veteran.

The PPP also has to battle the ruling PML (Q) in the elections. Backed by some sections of the establishment, the party is expected to put up a fierce fight to retain its status as President Musharraf’s “A team.” PML (Q) president Chaudhary Shujat Hussain fired the first shot with a remark the other day that the government was never serious about the ordinance, and it was only a political tactic to divide the opposition.

While a presidential spokesman stepped in to deny this, there is also a view that although President Musharraf needs the PPP politically, he too feels threatened by it and may not want too strong a showing by the party in the elections, one reason why he may be trying to discourage Ms. Bhutto from returning to mobilise her party.

With no guarantee that even free and fair elections would put them on centre stage of the new dispensation, PPP workers say their best bet is to try and hold on to the 59 seats they have at the moment. “People are much more discerning these days. They have multiple sources of information. We can’t fool them anymore,” said a middle-ranking PPP functionary in Sargodha in Punjab province.

While party rebels such as Aitzaz Ahsan and Rabbani, who openly questioned Ms. Bhutto’s negotiations with the Musharraf regime in the run-up to the presidential election, have quietly fallen in line, one prominent member, Naseerullah Babar — he bludgeoned the violent MQM into submission in Karachi when he was Interior Minister in Ms. Bhutto’s second government and was the principal backer of the Taliban at the time — quit the party with the words that “General Zia hanged Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979; General Musharraf killed the PPP on October 5, 2007.”

General Musharraf stands accused of cutting a deal to serve his own interests with a politician whom he called a “plunderer” and “looter” of national wealth, and for trivialising the idea of reconciliation by comparing the ordinance to the South African post-apartheid process of “truth and reconciliation.” But Ms. Bhutto has taken most of the flak. Not surprisingly, the feeling is growing that the military has once again managed to make politicians look ugly.

“Musharraf was so weak a few months ago, and the political parties were so strong. Now the opposite is true. The only consolation is that Maulana Fazlur Rehman is in a worse position than the PPP,” said the Sargodha party functionary, referring to the leader of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam in the opposition Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal coalition, blamed for enabling President Musharraf’s supporters to block an opposition move to disrupt the electoral college by dissolving the North West Frontier Province Assembly ahead of the presidential election.

Despite the blues, and creeping doubts about her return after President Musharraf’s statement that she should delay her homecoming, the PPP is mobilising to welcome Ms. Bhutto back to Pakistan on October 18. If she does not come back on that day, the demoralisation in the party can only get worse. If she does, and the government does nothing to block her, the PPP is expected to put up a decent welcome. Already, instructions are out for parliamentarians and provincial legislators from all provinces to take busloads of supporters each to Karachi, where she is due to arrive from London via Dubai. But the reception will not be anywhere near as rapturous or warm as the one she received in 1986, when she returned to take over the mantle of her father seven years after he was hanged.

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