It is not necessary to judge Ms Bhutto’s two years in power by the customary harangues of her rival, Mian Nawaz Sharif. Her own performance provides indictment enough. She was more credible as opposition leader than Mr Sharif, but she has proved nearly as disastrous as he is running Pakistan’s affairs. She must realise this herself. One still credits her with enough intelligence not to be deceived by her own rhetoric.
It is a pity that this should be so. Ms Bhutto started with considerable assets. She had a former party loyalist in the presidency. The smaller parties had almost all joined hands with her, not so much because they liked her more but because they liked Mr Sharif even less. Sindh was in her hands, in Punjab her coalition had a comfortable enough majority. And even in the NWFP she was soon to turn the tables her way. Not least, the army chief was resolved to stay apolitical and constitutional. It was a mark of that neutrality that an apparently strong coup attempt both against the political and military leadership was abated in time. Widespread popular discontent has always been fertile ground for the breeding of such conspiracies. The government and the opposition had both done their damnedest to create the conditions for the success of this one too.
The rubble of Ms Bhutto’s policies is littered all over the place. Nowhere more so than in Karachi. She has failed to recognise there the global phenomenon of recent decades ― of a terrorism that was basically a political force. She first adopted the approach of dealing with the MQM as a band of terrorists. That failed. It was bound to. As mayhem continued and pressure mounted, Ms Bhutto added the parallel track of political negotiations. But this looks almost equally impossible. The excesses committed on the common people in the pursuit of terrorists may not all instantly convert into active support for the MQM, but nor do they win goodwill for the government and its operation. Karachiites are, as a result, increasingly in despair.
Karachi has also caused countrywide ripples. The State Bank report has just unveiled a grim economic picture. There were failures in almost all sectors; in industrial and agricultural production, in exports and investments, in curbing public expenditure and inflation. Corruption, on the prime minister’s own administration, is rife. Prices and utility rates have spiralled. Law and order even outside of Karachi is in disarray. Respect for law was perhaps never more at a discount. There is little cheer from abroad too. Indigenous wizardry has not gone far enough in shedding the burdensome budgetary deficit. The word is that the IMF’s lifeline may therefore be held back this time. In which case it will be a desperate scramble to achieve balance and keep Pakistan’s financial head above water.
Admittedly, the opposition has been on the warpath against Ms Bhutto from day one. It has made a spectacle of itself by frequently keeling over in a constant bid to topple the government. But that was no reason for the government to add its own bitters to the brew by the customary recourse to harassment of members of the opposition, resort to the disreputable practice of horse-trading to defeat the opposition ministry in NWFP, and virtual supplanting of the law-making parliament with an ordinance-issuing presidency.
There was also no reason why the ruling party could not stand by its pledge of reviewing laws such as the Hudood Ordinances and prevent the abuse of an instrument like the so-called blasphemy laws. No reason too why it could not take strong initiatives in the neglected sectors of education and health. Cosmetic changes on behalf of women, children and minorities were no earnest of firm commitment for the disadvantaged.
In foreign relations, the recent Afghan criticism of Islamabad and the violence Kabul inspired against the Pakistan embassy were a throw-back to a forgotten past and betrayed an earlier hamhandedness in Islamabad’s handling of the embattled Afghan factions. If Kabul has so suddenly plummeted from extremes of warmth and sense of indebtedness to open and bitter hostility surely Islamabad should bear some responsibility for it? In the US, the Brown amendment if it finally sails through, may bring some moral solace and some equipment and reimbursement of paid installments but what else? What friends has Ms Bhutto’s globe-trotting won, or people influenced?
Ms Bhutto has used all her assets largely to survive in power. She has done a lot of running just to stay in the same place. The record of these two yeas is thus uninspiring. Worse still, this period has shown signs of an ominous weakening of institutions, loss of direction, lapse from commitments and a creeping sense of overall hopelessness.
This is still not the end of the world. A relationship between the state and the people has to be re-established. Ms Bhutto has another three years to go in theory. It may be so in practice too. More important, however, is what she has in mind to make of her period. It has to be different from her first two years. Very different.