The government may have successfully bust the ARD’s proposed rally at Mochi Gate in Lahore on March 23. But its decision and modus operandi have been variously diagnosed as “reactionary”, “precipitous”, “needless”, etc. The argument is that if the rally had not been disallowed it would have pitched the ARD in rather poor light because the politicians would not have been able to muster a respectable and animated crowd. As it is, Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, Qasim Zia and Javed Hashmi cannot bring themselves to wipe out the grins from their faces. Certainly, the regime has got a bad press at home and abroad.
But the supergenerals seem to have figured it out. “We don’t want to be distracted from our main concerns”, they rebut, suggesting that political activity is bad for the economy and noting the virtues of a “non-discriminatory” approach. Mr Farooq Leghari had planned to march from Peshawar to Attock to demand an international debt reprieve, hardly a provocative act. But he wasn’t allowed to do so. Similarly, Mr Rasul Bux Palejo’s long march in Sindh to focus on the issue of water-sharing and shortage was broken up even though it posed no discernable threat to the regime. All this is true enough. But it is actually the proverbial fig leaf for a less than democratic road map for the future. Consider the sequence of events and the logic of a veritable anti-democratic entry strategy that is cunningly portrayed as a “true democracy” exit strategy.
The local elections have been staggered over a seven month period and split unevenly across the provinces ostensibly because voter lists are not ready but actually because it is easier to control and channel passions in the desired direction over a longer time span and wider canvass compared to an unpredictable, one-shot, operation across the length and breadth of the country. In the absence of political parties, this is the best way to corral voters into polling stations without worrying about the results in the heat and dust of battle. Hence the 45% voter turnout last January was comfortably upped to over 50% on March 21. That was just two days before the proposed ARD rally. If the signal hadn’t gone out to the voters on the eve of the rally that party politicians were strictly no-no, the results of the second round of local elections might not have been so welcome to the regime as they were in the event.
Mian Azhar’s election as president of the PML on March 25 was also scheduled in the shadow of the ARD rally. After the ISI had painstakingly herded the recalcitrant PML MNAs into the dissident camp by promising all sorts of sweet nothings, how could it risk allowing the ARD to dilute or sabotage its message on March 25? The iron fist had to be smashed on the party-political street opposition as represented by the ARD so that the non-party independents at the local level and the King’s party hopefuls behind Mian Azhar in Islamabad could be massaged with a veiled glove. And never mind, as one keen observer has pointed out, that the Margalla Cricket Ground where a red carpet was laid out for the 5000 strong anti-Nawaz PML dissidents so that they could jostle and crowd each other out was bigger and better than the barbed-wire Mochi Gate venue denied to the ARD.
Therefore General Pervez Musharraf’s March 25 announcement to seek an indefinite extension in his tenure as army chief fits nicely into the jigsaw puzzle. When the time is ripe, he means to become the president of Pakistan. When and how will that happen?
General Musharraf is half way there already. Half the local elections are in the bag. And half the political opposition (ie, PML) is in his pocket. Come August, the curtain will fall on the local elections and it will be time to start thinking of provincial elections and what to do about Benazir Bhutto and the PPP. Come to think of it, what is to stop him from decreeing that no one may be elected prime minister if he or she has already been PM twice? Once his nemeses are out of the way for good, he could stagger the provincial elections across time and space much like the local elections and try and engineer “positive results”. That would leave him just one step short of the coveted presidency atop a planned national security council or some such thing. The coup de grace would come with the national elections, which would seek to legitimise and institutionalise the role of the supergeneral regime and accord primacy to General Pervez Musharraf. The question of the restoration of the assemblies is peripheral to the main thrust of future developments. It is merely one route among many to the same end.
If General Pervez Musharraf has his way there will be no politics on the streets of Pakistan. And Pakistanis will not be free to choose the politicians and political system of their choice. But if the road to hell is often paved with the best of intentions, history might still have its way and the best-laid plans could go astray.