News of fast and furious events in Afghanistan has swamped the front pages of newspapers recently. One serious casualty has been information about the widespread protests in Sindh over the naked rigging in the bye-elections in Sanghar.
Jam Ashiq Ali won with a whopping 61,035 votes against Shahnawaz Junejo’s paltry 5425. The provincial election commissioner, Mr M H Zaidi, said that “polling had been smooth and unexpectedly peaceful”. By any reckoning, this is an unbelievable result and the official statement adds insult to injury. Mr Zaidi is on record before the elections as saying he expected a turnout of between 30 to 45 per cent. Yet the “statistics” reveal that over 70 per cent votes materialised from out of a hat! How were the polls rigged?
Polling agents, journalists and photographers were beaten up or kidnapped. Over 200 political workers of the PDA were arrested, including a sitting MP. Most polling booths were ‘captured’ by Ashiq Ali’s armed thugs early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Other polling cordoned off to restrict the entry of PDA voters. Armed convoys roamed from station to station threatening and browbeating the electorate. 11 SPs with a massive police force were deployed in the constituency to harass Shahnawaz Junejo and his supporters. Two women were raped.
Why should we worry unduly about what happened in a solitary constituency somewhere in the wilderness of Sindh? The answer is devastatingly simple. The Chief Minister of the province, Mr Muzaffar Hussain Shah, has also got into the act of hammering nails in the coffin of democracy. By so doing, he has reaffirmed the convictions of an increasing number of people who are now openly saying that the existing political dispensation doesn’t work, that democracy is a farce, that we need a new system that suits out anarchistic genius better. In other words, “a dictatorship is better than a defiled democracy”, so let’s get on with martial law and put our house in order.
Much was therefore at stake in this election. Mr Shah was elected unanimously because he promised to start on a clean slate and respect the rules of democracy. Instead, he has launched himself in the footsteps of his terrorist predecessor Jam Sadiq Ali. So we can expect more of the same poison ahead.
More ominously, Mr Shah has foolishly played right into the hands of the cunning Pir Pagara. How is that? Through Jam Ashiq Ali, Pir Sahib has made an unholy alliance with Jam Sadiq’s parliamentary constituency. Effectively, the Pir now holds all the cards in Sindh. When he decides the time is ripe to trump Mr Shah and plunge Sindh into a crisis, he will simply team up with Messrs Jatoi and Bhutto to do the needful. When will that be? After Pir Sahib has collected sufficient Muslim Leaguers in the PUnjab and NWFP to mount a campaign against Mian Nawaz Sharif in Islamabad. What does the Pir want and why has he become ‘functional’ just now? Having camped out in the cold for so long and knowing he cannot even win his own seat in a fair election under a democratic system, Pir Sahib is rooting for martial law so that his “historic’ connection with GHQ can be fruitfully restored. After clinching the deal in Sindh, the Pir has zeroed in to Lahore. His ‘Ghapla’ went off nicely, than you, it is time to watch and wait for his next move. Intezaar Farmaye.
Mr Muzaffar Shah is astoundingly naive to have walked straight into the jaws of the Pir. Or else he has delusions of grandeur which blind him to the consequences of his political opportunism. As for the MQM, Mr Altaf Hussain hates the PPP so much that he doesn’t care what happens just as long as Bhutto is kept out. Either way, Messrs Shah and Hussain are headed for a collision with Messrs Pagara, Jatoi and Bhutto. When the latter get a nod from the powers-that-be, it will be curtains for democracy in Sindh. What then? If the military’s appetite is whetted in the province, it is a short hop to the federal capital. Bhutto learnt this tragic lesson in 1990. Are Mr Nawaz Sharif and others of his ilk fated to learn it too?
History not only repeats itself sometimes, it also moves forward in decisive ways. Slowly but surely, the stage is being set for an overhaul of the system. Some of Zia ul Haq’s crushing legacies have already evaporated or been dismantled forcefully. More along the same lines is on the agenda. When that happens, the tables will be reversed. The winners of yesteryear will become losers and vice-versa.
For better or for worse, the amended 1973 constitutional system is all we have got for the moment. If the likes of Mr Shah are callously going to knock it about, they will be the first to fall by the wayside. The real tragedy, though, is that we, the people, may be worse off in the end. As always.