KARACHI, 9 August — Barely two months before Oct. 10 elections, the rules of the game have not yet been put together and a ban remains on open political activities. Crucial decisions about constitutional amendments and the setting up of the controversial National Security Council have not been announced. But the political parties are completing, even if perfunctorily, the drill that has been prescribed by the government. And it is in this respect that the two major political parties of the former prime ministers have sprung up their tactical surprises.
While the Nawaz Sharif faction of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) has chosen younger brother Shahbaz as its head, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has added one more P to its name to create PPP Parliamentarians, headed by Makhdoom Amin Faheem. Both moves are dictated by laws that specifically deny the two former prime ministers any direct involvement in electoral politics.
Though Shahbaz Sharif, who was the hard-driving chief minister of the Punjab, has not been convicted in any case, he is in exile with other members of the family and officials said he would not be allowed to return as default and money-laundering cases were pending against the family. PML (N) leaders said that the leadership change was meant to ensure the party’s participation in general elections.
Initially, the PPP was seen to be avoiding any such expedient move and had elected Benazir Bhutto as the chairperson, in spite of the certainty that this would jeopardize the party’s participation in the elections. Until Monday morning, the last prescribed date for the holding of intra-party elections, there was mounting suspense about how Benazir Bhutto would play her cards and what would PPP’s disqualification do to the credibility of the elections.
But on Monday, PPP Parliamentarians was set up in an apparently hasty bid to avert the threat of losing the chance for contesting elections. This decision came as a bolt from the blue even for most party members and some saw it as a decision on the part of Benazir Bhutto to stay out during the forthcoming elections. However, she has again reiterated her resolve to return to Pakistan to contest the elections and confront the military regime even at the risk of imminent imprisonment.
In any case, many unanswered questions were immediately brought to the surface by the latest moves of the two mainstream parties. With reference to Shahbaz Sharif’s election, speculation initially rested on the possibility of a deal between the PML (N) and the military regime. It is generally believed that Shahbaz would have been acceptable to the military as the prime minister when it run into difficulties with Nawaz Sharif some time before the coup in October 1999.
A six-hour long joint meeting of the federal Cabinet and the National Security Council was held on Tuesday in Islamabad but it did not finally resolve the issue of constitutional amendments. It was reported that President Gen. Pervez Musharraf would hold another meeting tomorrow with the key players to finalize the amendments and then announce them in an address to the nation. This delay surely indicates that the government has been unnerved by strong political opposition to its pet proposals, including the setting up of a National Security Council that would almost formalize the military’s role in politics and the powers to be given to the president to sack the National Assembly or the Cabinet.
Meanwhile, the electoral process has to move forward. On Monday as many as 57 political parties submitted their documents to the Election Commission of Pakistan for the mandatory registration. The parties that are not registered would not be allowed to contest elections. Filing of nomination papers is to begin from Aug. 18. There is still some suspense regarding the registration of the new PPP outfit because it may not have completed all the formalities.
Irrespective of how the electoral game is played, the original plan of the military government to lay the foundations of a stable and what it called genuine democracy through incontrovertible constitutional reforms is now seriously threatened. Not only have reforms become highly controversial, the very capability of the government to preside over a transparent and fair electoral exercise is becoming suspect.
Indeed, the basic issue in Pakistan is whether the political environment now available is conducive to the holding of credible elections. In that sense, President Musharraf must find himself in an unenviable situation.
The overall social situation, mainly in terms of law and order, remains highly unsatisfactory and a confrontation is building up between the government and the mainstream political parties. There was a fresh terrorist attack on a Christian church in Murree on Monday, with six deaths. On the same day, the US Consulate in Karachi was closed down for security reasons. And one was still apprehensive about the great derangement that elections are likely to spawn.
