The MMA’s leading firebrand, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, claims he’s ready to flaunt the resignations of 67 federal parliamentarians in the face of the NA Speaker any day. Hold on, cautions the MMA’s wily leader, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, this isn’t the right time to throw the gauntlet for President-General Pervez Musharraf. But I don’t agree with you, insists Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, the Maulana’s second-in-command, and I am ready to create mayhem along with Qazi Saheb. Hold on, that’s unfair, grumble the rank and file of the MMA parliamentarians in Islamabad, why should we pack up while our colleagues continue to enjoy the fruits of power in the NWFP and Balochistan provincial assemblies? If we have to resign and force Islamabad’s hand, they argue, then everyone in the MMA should quit en masse from the national and provincial assemblies. This is the cue for the chief minister of the NWFP to stand up and be counted. We are ready to quit, thunders Akram Durrani, but we are waiting for a nod from the leader of our party. And who’s that? Maulana Fazlur Rehman! So the MMA is huffing and puffing but really isn’t in any position to bring the House down.
The scene in London isn’t too hot either. Like Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Mr Nawaz Sharif would love nothing more than to see the back of General Musharraf asap. He knows that as long as the General is around, in one form or another, there is no scope for him personally and institutionally. As the idiom goes, how can two swords sheath together? Nor is there any scope for him in the next elections, whenever they are held, because General Musharraf has also robbed him of his party and chained him in exile. But Mr Sharif rightly wonders whether this is the proper time to try and topple his foe. For one, Maulana Fazlur Rehman isn’t fully on board. But more significantly, Benazir Bhutto isn’t too keen on a strategy of resignations and street agitation. And without her party’s popular clout, no street agitation in the Punjab is likely to create a dent in the government.
Ms Bhutto, meanwhile, is enjoying all the attention she is finally getting after so many years in the wilderness. General Musharraf is wooing her party because he is worried about the dwindling support base of his pro-US policies which have alienated the public and outraged the mullahs. Obviously he is hoping that the PPP’s moderate, anti-mullah and pro-West brand of populism will provide just the tonic he needs to cling to power and retain the economic, military and political backing of the West. Mr Sharif, too, is ready to embrace his old foe – the same one he once threatened to chop up and throw into the Arabian Sea – on the logic that his enemy’s enemy is his friend. He also realizes that if and when the crunch comes on the streets of the Punjab he will need the PPP by his side to punch beyond his weight. And as far as Maulnana Fazlur Rehman is concerned, his abiding “relationship” with the “daughter of the East” goes back to the time when she made him the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of Parliament and sent him off to gallivant all over the capitals of the world in the perennially elusive quest of the Holy Grail of Kashmir. Under the circumstances, with so many ardent but hypocritical and self-serving suitors fussing over her, why should Ms Bhutto elope with one of them and cut her options so early in the game? Clearly, she is the centre of attraction and means to enjoy her new status as long as possible.
Meanwhile, the government is sanguine that all is proceeding according to plan. The Women’s Protection Bill has been passed and the Heavens haven’t fallen. The opposition is divided because Islamabad is dangling the prospects of power sharing before the PPP and JUI while debunking the threat of the Jamaat i Islami and PMLN. Meanwhile, the MQM and ANP have been assured a berth in the next dispensation, both at the expense of the mullahs in Karachi and Peshawar. General Musharraf says that temporary upheavals and dislocations are all part of the game and nothing to worry about. Indeed, there may well be a move afoot to strengthen the ruling PMLQ by diluting the monopolistic hold of the Chaudhries and including some old disgruntled stalwarts into the leadership. So we shouldn’t be surprised if it is reported that Hamid Nasir Chatha, for instance, has been to-ing and fro-ing to Sindh and Karachi and having chummy chats with Pir Pagara and the Sindh CM with an eye to the presidentship of the PMLQ! Isn’t a genuinely effective Grand National Alliance, with the Chathas, Wattoos, Legharis, etc., all thrown in for comfort, to be preferred to a divided PMLQ?
In this reckoning, the key players to watch out for are General Musharraf and Chaudhry Pervez Elahi on one side and Benazir Bhutto and Fazlur Rehman on the other. If they all get together and share power, Pakistan will sail through the next five years smoothly. But if they are pitted against each other, then instability will follow.