Has the battle royal finally begun? Is a last minute “reconciliation” between President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif out of the question?
Signals of Presidential displeasure at the PM began to sound the boards in January. He didn’t like the PM’s interference in the appointment of the new army chief. In February, the President was annoyed by Mr Sharif’s overtures to Ms Bhutto. In March Mr Sharif announced his intention to undo the 8th amendment and capture the Muslim League. There was now no mistaking Mr Sharif’s ambitions. He was out to clip the old bird’s wings.
The President’s responded in equal measure at every stage. He made his own man COAS. He opened his own lines of communication with Ms Bhutto and threw a spanner in Mr Sharif’s works. He opened the gates of the Presidency to every Sharif opponent in town and publicly determined to resist any encroachments on his powers. Last week, he ordered his son-in-law Mr Anwar Saifullah to quit the cabinet and join forces with Mr Chattha et al to thwart the PM’s plans to hijack the Muslim League.
In consequence, Mr Sharif has ended up antagonising the army high command; his ‘deal’ with Ms Bhutto has fallen through; and he is backpedalling on the 8th amendment. The PM now appears to be angling for a live and let live “reconciliation” with the President.
Even so, most people believe President Ishaq will exact a terrible revenge from Mr Sharif for trying to stab him in the back. Others say that Mr Khan might stay his hand because his immediate options are fraught with serious problems.
Dissolving the assemblies along the lines of the 1990 ouster of Bhutto can hardly be the President’s preferred option. Since it will be difficult to defend before the Supreme Court, even with a hand-picked Chief Justice in place later this month, realpolitik demands he shouldn’t risk it.
Dissolving the assemblies on the basis of the resignations of about 70 MNAs, which include those of the PDA, is difficult to imagine. Ms Bhutto will demand a quid pro quo (at the least, a withdrawal of the references against her), something the President has been most reluctant to concede because it would mock his ouster of her government in 1990. At any rate, it would be a disastrous precedence to set. No government in the future could ever feel secure confronted with the threat of mass opposition resignations to bring the house down.
Dissolving parliament through a revolt by a couple of provincial chief ministers (NWFP and Sindh) might, however, do the trick. The President could then argue that the federal system was at stake. But this too would be a dangerous precedent to set.
Even if, based on a combination of suitable pretexts, the dissolution route is eventually taken, a number of stumbling blocks lie ahead. How will the President ensure that neither Ms Bhutto nor Mr Sharif will return to haunt him after elections are held? Mr Khan has had such a hard time pinning Ms Bhutto down in the references and making sure that she lost the 1990 elections that he will probably think twice before attacking Mr Sharif in the same fashion. At any rate, if the people are not going to be allowed to vote for either Ms Bhutto or Mr Sharif, who are they going to vote for? A dissolution of parliament, therefore, can hardly be followed by fresh elections. So it will be back to the Supreme Court for fresh legitimisation. And even if the SC obliges, from where is the President going to get the raw material to cobble a government which looks credible, acts democratically and is not prone to instability? And for how long will such a stop-gap arrangement work before it splits at the seams and plunges the President into another crisis?
The other route is to inspire a revolt against Mr Sharif within the National Assembly. The three gentlemen who have resigned from the cabinet have done so because they oppose Mr Sharif’s candidature as president of the Muslim League. Presumably, a couple of more Muslim League ministers have been lined up to follow suit in the next few days for much the same reason. What then? How will the President’s lobby force Mr Sharif to seek a vote of confidence and make doubly sure that he fails to get it? If it comes to horsetrading, no one should be in any doubt about Mr Sharif’s ability to give his opponents a run for their money.
There are so many “ifs” and “buts” in the situation that the President could end up taking recourse to “extra-constitutional deviations” to salvage his pride and cut Mr Sharif down to size. A better option would be a historic compromise, a reconciliation not just between the office of the President and that of the Prime Minister but one among the persons of Mr Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Mr Nawaz Sharif and Ms Benazir Bhutto. But that may be expecting too much from the cock-sure pygmies who inhabit parliament.