Prime minister Benazir Bhutto is sanguine that she will win the next elections in 1998. She believes that rural Sindh and southern Punjab will back her to the hilt even if substantial sections of north-central urban Punjab swing behind Mr Nawaz Sharif. In the next two years, she hopes to bring inflation under control, get the economy out of the trough and uproot terrorism in Karachi. If she succeeds, and she has no doubt that she will, she believes people will forgot the miseries of the first two years of her government and return her to power. In the meanwhile, she intends to harass the opposition so that it cannot muster the ability or will to destabilise her government. Ms Bhutto thinks that her strategy is fail-safe because she has “neutralised” the Presidency, judiciary and armed forces.
We beg to disagree. Ms Bhutto has ignored three major factors which could potentially wreck her plans. (1) In the final analysis, the President and the COAS owe their loyalty to the state rather than to the government in power. If push comes to shove and the state is seriously imperiled, both are likely to come under pressure to act decisively. (2) While support of the rural areas is a necessary precondition for winning power, alienation of the urban areas is a sure-shot recipe for losing it before a government’s term is up. The simmering discontent in the urban middle classes should therefore be an urgent pointer for Ms Bhutto. (3) The opposition is an integral part of the political system. As long as it perceives a definite stake in the survival of the system, the state is not threatened. When it stops doing so, either because of personal rancour or because it apprehends an unfair election, it can plunge the system into crisis and trigger unforeseen consequences for the government.
If truth be told, Ms Bhutto’s government is perceived, in the urban areas at least, to be unacceptably inept and corrupt. Her handling of the economy, despite a backlog of inherited difficulties, has been shoddy and whimsical. She has crossed the limits of decency and fair-play in her relations with the opposition, which is increasingly under pressure to spike the system. More ominously, tribal anarchy, political terrorism and Islamic extremism — manifestations of a weakening state — are on the rise. If all this confirms a gnawing perception in the organs of state and society that Ms Bhutto is becoming part of the problem rather than part of the solution, she is headed for trouble.
The system can be saved from imminent collapse only if Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif jointly shoulder the burden of doing so. This would require both parties to abandon their current hostilities and agree on the rules of the game, in particular those governing the functioning of parliament, tenure of governments and the administrative wherewithal of the next elections.
But this may be easier said than done. Personal acrimony, vindictiveness and enmity continue to prejudice the response of both leaders to such suggestions. Neither is prepared to “concede” anything to the other because “compromise” has become a dirty word in the lexicon of our politics. That is where President Farooq Leghari comes into the picture.
Mr Leghari has never tired of emphasising that when he became President he relinquished his membership of the Peoples Party and became “neutral”. But the opposition is convinced otherwise. What has he done to try and rein in corruption, they ask. What has he done to stop the government from victimising the opposition? In all fairness, these are weighty questions which Mr Leghari cannot dismiss so easily.
Mr Leghari’s reluctance to “meddle” in the affairs of the government, however distasteful some of its policies may appear to him, is probably rooted in a strict reading of the constitution in which the President is obliged to act under the advice of the Prime Minister on most occasions. Nor do the rules of government give much scope to the President to affect a change of course in government policies. But surely there is nothing in the constitution which bars the President, in the interests of political stability, from establishing good relations with the opposition and lending an ear to their complaints. Why has he been reluctant to break bread with Mr Sharif? If he is genuinely a neutral head of state, isn’t it incumbent upon him to take the initiative and try to bridge the widening gulf between opposition and government?
A rapprochement between President Leghari and Mr Sharif has become a pre-condition for a “settlement” between Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif. Ms Bhutto should not see this as an attempt to drive a wedge between her and Mr Leghari. Nor should Mr Sharif seek to exploit it as such. There is too much at stake. People are fed up with the childish histrionics of both party leaders and losing confidence in the system. In the interests of the country, therefore, President Leghari has a moral and constitutional duty to nudge both protagonists in the right direction. He should put petty considerations aside, display statesmanship and get on with it.