The PDA’s impressive White Paper on electoral rigging is compulsory reading. It lays bare the massive manipulation and fraud which accompanied elections last October. It also helps clarify the driving logic of President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, the linchpin of an elaborate plan by the state to exclude Benazir Bhutto from power.
Tensions between Mr Khan and Ms Bhutto have existed at the personal and institutional level from day one. Long a mainstay of the dictatorial regime of Zia ul Haq which remained at extreme odds with the compulsions of the PPP, Mr Khan arrived at the Presidency in rather desperate circumstances. The armed forces, reeling from a sudden depletion of their high command, were keen to open up political space, not least because a burgeoning popular movement for the restoration of democracy was also banging at the doors of Islamabad and threatening to break them down.
Within weeks of the transfer of power, the President had summarily pre-empted the rules of the game. The Balochistan government was dismissed by Governor Musa, a Presidential nominee, but Bhutto was heaped with ignominy and blame. Soon thereafter, the CM Punjab, Mr Nawaz Sharif, also a remnant of the Zia regime, was encouraged to flout the writ of the federal government. Bhutto responded by determining to strip Mr Khan of his extraordinary powers under the 8th amendment. As a necessary first step, she sought to overthrow Mr Sharif in the Punjab assembly.
This unfortunate strategy merely served to confirm allegations that her party was inimical to democratic pluralism and wished to hog the show.
Tensions with the President inevitably grew — over the scope of his discretionary powers, rules of government, appointment of judges to the superior courts and foreign policy initiatives.
The President retaliated by encouraging the Ziaist opposition to vote her out of parliament. Although she survived the no-confidence motion, she mishandled the ethnic strife between Sindhis and Mohajirs following a split between the MQM and the PPP. Neither the armed forces nor the President were prepared to offer a helping hand. Because she also ran a corrupt and inefficient government, it was time for Mr Khan’s coup de grace.
This is where the White Paper steps in to fill an analytical void. It confirms what many have long suspected — that the dismissal of the Bhutto government last year was part of an elaborate plan by the state under President Ishaq to exclude the Peoples Party from power. The Paper meticulously documents the “malafide intent” of the President in the intimidatory and discriminatory manner of the dissolution of the national and provincial assemblies. It highlights the partisan objectives of the interim cabinet. The President’s intentions are revealed by his statements and speeches during the run up to the elections. It proves the establishment of an “election cell” in the Presidency and alleges that it “was used on election night to alter certain results” and to “disseminate anti-PPP propaganda in the press”. It explains how the judiciary was manipulated by the President when it was petitioned to overturn the dissolution orders. It shows how the President rigged the Election Commission by staffing it with officers known for their “anti-PPP bias”.
In short, the White Paper is damning indictment of how the President acted “capriciously, vexatiously and for political purposes” in ousting Bhutto and subsequently “preparing and filing seventeen references” against the PPP and rigging the elections in order to thwart her quest for power.
The White Paper’s publication is timely for several reasons. While it removes nagging doubts about the President’s intentions, more important it helps explain his stony silence in the wake of recent charges of corruption, patronage and misuse of power by the Sharif government. How can the president possibly countenance action against this government or hold it accountable when his own long-term survival depends on the longevity of this regime? No wonder, too, because the President has painted himself into a corner, Mr Jam Sadiq and son-in-law Irfanullah Marwat are allowed to get away with blue-murder in Sindh.
The White Paper lays bare the crisis of legitimacy which haunts the Pakistani state. Unable to come to terms with the democratic demands of our times, the Ziaist state is flouting the forms of democracy and robbing them of their true content. President Ishaq has donned the ceremonial robes of Zia ul Haq and brought the evolution of a democratic political culture to a halt.
The way ahead is blocked by the logic of his actions. If Bhutto is disqualified in any of the Presidential references, the PDA will most certainly quit the assemblies, take to the streets in frustration and court arrest. So we will be thrown back to the beginning of political time, with the spectre of martial law once again beckoning us as the only way out of a historical logjam. That is why the President could do much worse by not holding the current prime minister to accountability and insisting upon a referendum to ascertain the legitimacy of his government.