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What will these elections bring?

— PHOTO: AFP

PML (N) leader Nawaz Sharif addresses an election rally in Abbotabad on Thursday.

The February 18 elections in Pakistan were designed in such a way that the outcome would not be a surprise or upset the status quo.

For months, Benazir Bhutto had been lobbying in Washington and other Western capitals saying that were she to secure the Islamabad “gaddi,” she would conclude the war on terror in cooperation with the United States and, of course, the Nort h Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). She saw a moderate Islamic Republic emerging only in cooperation with the West. As a token of her intent, she even promised to hand over A.Q. Khan to the “international community.”

All this at a time when the U.S. administration and Congress were despairing. The war on terror was going one step forward, two steps back. President Pervez Musharraf had committed a series of inexplicable blunders: the killing of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in Balochistan, a wave of disappearances, dismantling of the higher judiciary, repression of the lawyers’ movement, crackdown on the media, detentions, house arrests, and finally the imposition of the emergency on November 3, 2007. There were eight suicide bombings in 2006; the figure rose to 56 in 2007.

It was during this period that the idea of a troika surfaced: a President, a Prime Minister, and an Army Chief. Since each of the three was committed to the war on terror in collaboration with Washington, the backlash from the militancy and popular public anger would be distributed evenly among them. Benazir’s return to Pakistan was to follow this script.

When she returned on October 18, two contradictory facts registered with her. First, the scale of the reception, to which President Musharraf’s recent misdemeanours must have contributed. Secondly, the anger of Pakistan’s other half, suicide bombers included, obviously aggravated by the common knowledge that she was returning as part of an American plan.

Benazir, with her eye on the main chance, began to tailor her statements, distancing herself at least in her public pronouncements from both the sources of unpopularity — the U.S. and President Musharraf. This was her stance at the meeting in Liaqat Bagh on December 27 where she was assassinated. The confusion over who was behind her killing derives from the rapidly changing agenda she was adopting.

But all the scripts were blown with her death. All that President Musharraf could do was to postpone the election to February 18.

Earlier, when the former Prime Minister and leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (N), Nawaz Sharif, learnt in Jeddah that his arch rival, Benazir, was returning home, he too put on his skates. Then followed the drama at the Islamabad airport: Mr. Sharif arrived and was immediately deported. Since he was the Saudis’ guest in Jeddah, they were brought into play. They told Mr. Sharif that his fears were misplaced: Benazirwas not returning to Pakistan. After all the suspense, when she returned on October 18, it became impossible for the Saudis to keep Mr. Sharif on a leash. On November 25, he materialised in Lahore.

The original script of a U.S.-friendly troika was already getting complicated. The blood feud between Mr. Sharif and President Musharraf goes back to the military coup of October 12, 1999. Moreover, Mr. Sharif had Islamic links the U.S. was wary of. After all, in August 1998, Mr. Sharif had, as Prime Minister, introduced a bill making the Koran and Sunnah the basic law in Pakistan.

The backdrop of anti-Americanism in Pakistan brought out Mr. Sharif’s relative distance from U.S. patronage into such bold relief (this, mind you, when U.S.-backed military operations in Swat and South Waziristan are still on), that Benazir’s affiliations became an embarrassment.

On Benazir’s death what one saw in Naudero was a medieval, Sindhi succession — the manner in which Bilawal Zardari was anointed. In Mughal history, Akbar was in his teens when Humayun died. Bairam Khan was appointed the Regent. That is the role Asif Zardari had originally assigned to himself. Amin Fahim, he said, would be the Pakistan People’s Party nominee for Prime Minister. But it is already public knowledge that a post-Benazir power struggle in the PPP is in full swing and has presumably caused Mr. Zardari to announce his candidature as Prime Minister. That he backtracked on this one has left a question mark on the leadership issue.

Mr. Sharif first wanted the elections postponed, the judiciary restored, a national government, and so on, but the last time I saw him was under a giant shamiana in Lahore with PML (N) candidates for the National and Provincial Assemblies, undergoing a crash course in negotiating the expected poll rigging.

Exit polls are not allowed, and monitors from the International Republican Institute have packed up and left. Even their departure is shrouded in mystery: they are said to have left because a fair poll (which is what it would have to be if they were around) might produce an outcome that neither the Army nor the U.S. wants. In these circumstances, coaching classes to minimise rigging are Pakistan’s original contribution to electoral democracy.

Can the establishment fudge an election right under the nose of a vigilant civil society? And Pakistan’s civil society is vigilant. This is evident from the fact that the lawyers’ movement did not lose momentum. The other new invigorating element in Pakistan is the growth of lively TV channels, some minimal curbs notwithstanding. We in India should have access to Pakistani channels. The openness of their debates on the most sensitive issues will put some of our premier channels to shame.

So, will the elections be held? Yes, but they will be “managed.” If they have to be managed excessively, word will be out and people will be on the streets. Should the “management” not be able to prevent an unacceptable outcome, what then?

The U.S. elections are taking an unusual turn. The attention of the Americans, like those in the rest of the world, is riveted on these elections. The attention span required to see Pakistan through to a post-Musharraf phase is probably lacking in Washington in its current mood. Elections in Pakistan, imperfect on all counts, are more to satisfy U.S. Congressional requirements than to meet Pakistani civil society’s democratic urge.

Postponing change at the highest level (that is, removing President Musharraf), according to one American calculation, also ensures continuity for Pakistani military action in Waziristan, now in its fiercest phase.

Coinciding with the NATO Defence Ministers’ meeting in Vilnius, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband visited Kabul. But it was the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, who visited Pakistan to keep up the tempo of the war on terror. That, then, is the U.S. priority in addition to the other even more urgent issue — the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. The Director of National Intelligence, Michael McConnell, has told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the “ongoing political uncertainty in Pakistan has not seriously threatened the military’s control of the nuclear arsenal, but vulnerabilities exist.”

What are these “vulnerabilities”? A post-election civilian government in coalition possibly even with Islamic parties?

The tendency of the PPP, the Army, civil society and elements in the U.S., to treat leaders of parties such as Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan as untouchables is fraught with grave danger. Unless the religious formations, which have not renounced the parliamentary system, are accommodated in the power structure, their cadres will cross over to the likes of Baitullah Mehsud, plaguing the Pakistan army in Waziristan.

The greatest danger Pakistan faces is not civil unrest on account of fudged elections, the high judiciary being locked in, and President Musharraf obstinately clinging to power. Much the greatest danger to the country’s survival comes from the Pashtun revolt infecting the army and stretching from Kandahar right up to Waziristan and further in. Look at the irony. Afghanistan was supposed to provide Pakistan with strategic depth. Instead, the Afghan conflict is about to devour a chunk of Pakistan.

(Saeed Naqvi is a columnist and a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.)

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