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Inspiring outcome

The people of Pakistan have done themselves proud by voting decisively against military rule as well as religious extremism in the general election of February 18. The vote was so overwhelmingly in favour of liberal-centrist democratic forces that the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz Sharif) have together taken close to 60 per cent of the seats in the National Assembly. The PPP has swept its traditional stronghold of rural Sindh; in the Seraiki belt of Punjab, it appears to be regaining the ground it lost over the last two decades. With an unanticipated second-placed finish in the North West Frontier Province and seat gains in Balochistan, the PPP will be the single largest party in parliament. Benazir Bhutto’s admirers within and outside Pakistan will however be disappointed that the wave of sympathy set off by her assassination was not strong enough to give her party even 100 of the 268 parliamentary seats for which elections were held. The Pakistan Muslim League (Qaid-e-Azam), the party that served as the civilian mask for President Pervez Musharraf’s dictatorial regime, has fared poorly but remains a force. In a clear rejection of anti-democratic politics, voters handed down humiliating defeats to PML(Q)’s president and former Prime Minister, Chaudhary Shujat Hussain, and several former Ministers, including Khurshid Kasuri, Sheikh Rashid, Sher Afghan Niazi, and Wasi Jafar. Upsets of this sort were registered across Punjab, a province in which the King’s Party tried hard to consolidate its position over the past five years; its notable wins, such as Faisal Saleh Hayat’s victory over Begum Abida Hussein, are attributable to local factors. The PML(N), on the other hand, has won decent electoral dividends for the uncompromising fight it put up against authoritarianism and constitutional manipulation and fraud. It has demonstrated the strength of its roots in central and northern Punjab. This is a most creditable showing considering that the Musharraf regime directed much of its ire at Mr. Sharif’s party and attempted, along with the King’s Party, to squeeze it in a pincer.

What is clear is that the people of Pakistan have voted for a stable coalition government of the PPP and PML(N) — with the premiership going to the single largest party. Such an arrangement has political merit since it would consolidate the leading elective democratic forces in Pakistan’s politics. The importance of strengthening this base to mobilise the masses against army-based authoritarianism on the one side and religious extremism on the other cannot be overestimated. There is also a good chance that the formation of a PPP-PML(N) coalition will not lead to a situation where parties representing extremist tendencies take up much of the space left for the opposition. Parties with secular credentials have done well in urban Sindh and the NWFP. The Muttahida Quami Movement has retained its hold over Karachi and Hyderabad while the Awami National Party has experienced a heartening revival in the NWFP. The rout of the Religious Right in an election that was free and fair raises the question whether it could have ever gained such prominence without the support of the military establishment. Encouragingly, there seems to be a connection between the spectacular fall of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal in the NWFP and a professional order recently issued by the Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. He directed military personnel to withdraw from the civilian administration and to refrain from contacts with politicians. Together with nationalist, left-leaning politicians elected from Balochistan, the MQM and the ANP could offer a left-of-centre opposition.

The key question is whether Pakistan’s two leading parties can overcome their differences and tensions over the kind of intermediate political-constitutional arrangements they want for Pakistan. Mr. Sharif’s party has made it clear that it wants the restoration of the judiciary; the repeal of the 17th constitutional amendment, which enabled General Musharraf to remain in power; and the removal of all restrictions on the media. It has also indicated, not in so many words, that it wants President Musharraff to go, possibly through the threat of impeachment, which must now be reckoned to be on Pakistan’s political agenda. Will Asif Zardari and a PPP that has, under the influence of its western backers, shown a distinctive inclination to compromise with the Musharraf dispensation agree to the PML(N)’s terms — which might mean embarking on a course of confrontation with a dictator who is down but still in place? Nobody wants confrontation but the alternative scenario of the PPP turning to the PML(Q), the MQM, and the ANP to form a government will mean betraying the people’s mandate.

Hearteningly, the results of the four provincial assembly elections reflect the same pattern as the parliamentary outcome. The PML(N) will be the single largest party in Punjab and can legitimately claim the chief ministership, as part of a coalition arrangement with the PPP. There is no uncertainty at all about who will rule Sindh; the PPP has won a clear majority of Assembly seats in this province where its ascendancy signals a welcome end to the era of unstable coalitions. Quite different types of coalition arrangements, bringing the PPP and the PML(Q) together in Balochistan and the ANP, the PPP, and the PML(N) together in the NWFP, seem unavoidable. With the people of Pakistan decisively and inspiringly repudiating the dictatorial actions of President Musharraf, and the political forces that colluded with him, the most sensible course of action for him is to step down, thus helping his country and people come out of their time of troubles.

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