If a black cat can have up to nine lives, Benazir Bhutto must wonder why she can’t be blessed with a third one at least. Why not, indeed?
The recent supreme court order for a retrial of the SGS/Cotecna corruption case against her and Asif Zardari proves that the high court trial in 1998-99 was rigged by Nawaz Sharif. Certainly, Saif ur Rehman’s abject “apology” to Mr Zardari recently is evidence of his objectionable role in the matter.
Ms Bhutto can also safely assume that the retrial will keep her on the front pages for a long time. Her review petition for acquittal will take some weeks. If she wins, well and good. But if she loses, the question of the “competent court” in which the trial is to be held will have to be addressed. However, the old accountability law under which she was tried in the high court has given way to the NAB ordinance under which the government will want to seize the issue. But Ms Bhutto is likely to challenge this assumption. That should consume some more energy. At any rate, the NAB ordinance is already being thrashed in the supreme court where, let alone the judges who are perceptibly hostile to it, even the attorney-general is embarrassed to own up to its draconian provisions. Thus a watered-down accountability ordinance should afford her personal relief as well present opportunities to fortify her legal defence.
Much, of course, will depend on the supreme court’s detailed logic when this is made public. In turn, Ms Bhutto’s defence will depend on whether the court has attached any relevance or significance to the conduct of the high court judges as demonstrated by the scandalous tapes, or based its judgment on the procedural unfairness of the trial. Additionally, the question of whether there is to be a trial from scratch or whether only certain aspects of recording and appreciation of evidence are to be redressed will impact on the duration of the retrial. Finally, both sides are likely to appeal galore as the case trudges all the way back to the supreme court. Does this mean that Ms Bhutto can afford to relax?
Hardly. General Khalid Maqbool, the head honcho at NAB, was forewarned. So he is forearmed with a clutch of brand new charges against Ms Bhutto and Mr Zardari. He says that if the lady thinks she can set a free foot in Pakistan she is sadly mistaken. Ms Bhutto, of course, understands the language of the generals only too well and has calibrated her response accordingly. Disclaiming a quick return to Pakistan, she has ordered her party stalwarts to make haste for London for a meeting to determine an appropriate re-entry strategy for her. Meanwhile, delighted with the PPP’s improved showing in the Punjab during the second stage of the local elections, she has nudged Nawabzada Nasrullah to test the waters by attempting a second public plunge on May Day. Her approach is failsafe because she has learnt her lessons well.
In a predominantly two-party system, post cold-war nature abhors a political vacuum just as much as it abhors attempts to fill the vacuum by a non-representative third party. Thus the vacuum engineered by Ms Bhutto’s ouster in 1990 was filled by Mr Sharif, the one by Mr Sharif in 1993 by Ms Bhutto and the one by Ms Bhutto in 1996 by Mr Sharif in 1997. So she is basically telling the generals that they should make a deal with her to fill the current vacuum. But General Pervez Musharraf thinks otherwise. He believes that instead of filling the vacuum in the old political system it is time to sweep the old system aside by creating a new one which is based on the two popular parties but without their acknowledged leaders so that he can become the kingpin instead of either of them.
This is a novel idea. It departs from Zia ul Haq’s non-party model by trying to reinvent the Pakistan Muslim League without Nawaz Sharif while holding out the possibility of working with the Pakistan Peoples Party without the Bhutto-Zardaris. But it is far from being accomplished. Indeed, the inability of the pro-Musharraf PML dissident group to fire the imagination of the Pakistani public, coupled with the supreme court’s judicial reassertion and an aggressively pro-democracy international environment, has enabled Ms Bhutto to deal herself a good hand. She means to throw everything she can muster at General Musharraf so that she can get a better deal from him than Nawaz Sharif. What’s possible?
Protestations for the sake of form notwithstanding, General Musharraf is not averse to political deals when the alternative is less palatable. Thus the greater Ms Bhutto’s success in making a real public comeback, the better the deal she can hope to get from General Musharraf. At the very least, she has to make a real nuisance of herself so that Mr Zardari is let off and a front-row seat is reserved for the PPP in the next national assembly without Ms Bhutto. That, at least, is one possible script. But Pakistani scripts are notoriously susceptible to the mercurial Pakistani weather.