Whether Benazir Bhutto’s “long march” to Islamabad ended with a bang or whimper doesn’t much matter. What matters is that, even before the “long march” kicked off, she had already succeeded in enforcing a psychological siege of Islamabad. This siege is not about to be lifted in a hurry and may manifest itself in different forms in the days and weeks ahead.
Mr Nawaz Sharif therefore has a running crisis on his hands. Evidence of his panic last week cannot be doubted. For days before the march, the government stopped functioning and went into a huddle to diffuse the challenge. It left no stone unturned to thwart the gathering crowds. Thousands of police, commandoes and para-military forces were called out to block the marchers everywhere. Hundreds of PPP workers were arrested in preemptive swoops. Route-permits for buses were hastily cancelled. Since Ms Bhutto has just begun her “long march”, will Islamabad grind to a halt every time she threatens to kick up a storm? Logic, therefore, would suggest that some sort of “change” may be unavoidable sooner or later.
Ms Bhutto is decidedly gung-ho. If she has received a “signal” from somewhere, as conspiracy theorists insist, she certainly isn’t letting on. Anyway, her reasonsing is simple. (1) Mr Sharif is in no mood to live and let live. On the contrary, if he consolidates power it is almost certain that he will try next year to see the back of the President and the COAS in order to establish an autocracy. As for Bhutto herself, she would probably be “ripped up into pieces and thrown into the sea”, as Mr Sharif once proclaimed and as Mr Ghulam Haider Wyne never tires of threatening. With disqualification a hair’s breadth away and Asif Zardari’s ordeal showing no signs of abating, she has everything to bid for by standing up and being counted. (2) Therefore she will try to exacerbate existing tensions within the troika (and the ones between the PM and the COAS are something to write about) in the hope that something or someone will give way and open up some breathing space for her.
Is that likely? Option One is for the President to send the assemblies packing. However, we doubt he will consider this seriously. It has happened twice already in four years and only served to sharpen the political divide. Option Two is martial law. True, the armed forces are sick and tired of constantly having to sweep the dust after the politicians have slugged it out and made a royal mess of things. But a coup would seem to fly in the face of post cold-war realities. At any rate, apart from seriously undermining the army’s professionalism, the Generals must know that martial law is not a panacea for teething political strife. Option Three is for the President and COAS to put their heads together and jointly effect a “neutral” government, sans Messrs Sharif and Bhutto. Is this plausible?
It is, if you consider what the pliant Mr Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi has to offer: (1) a “national” government which disarms Bhutto by withdrawing the references against her, frees her husband and orders a thorough clean-up of Sindh followed by free and fair by-elections. (2) a reprieve for Mr Sharif by not holding him accountable for all the corruptions of the last two years. (3) a commitment to the people of this country to ruthlessly weed out crime, corruption, terrorism, drugs and sectarianism before ordering genuinely free and fair elections in 1994 or ’95.
But there could be a couple of snags. First, the powers-that-be might want a clean break from the murky past in order for the new regime to be credible. Second, Mr Sharif might object to becoming a non-entity overnight. He could conceivably throw a spoke in everyone’s wheels by asking the President to dissolve the assemblies and order fresh elections under his premiership.
Mr Sharif will fight to the bitter end, naturally. But if the crunch comes, he may be counselled to seek a safe exit rather than to incur the unmitigated wrath of the President and the COAS, which would leave him in the unenviable position of his nemesis, Benazir Bhutto, in 1990.
It is, however, worth asking whether or not such an “interim-national” government will work under the circumstances? Not if President Ishaq Khan is still around to chaperone it as he has done so dreadfully in the past. So, for the scheme to work, we need to persuade not just Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif to take a back seat but also to nudge Mr Ishaq Khan to honourably retire next year. If a truly “national” government is to guide us out of these recurring crises, we might for starters justifiably consider dispensing with the legacies of the past, the “elected” wallahs temporarily and the “unelected” ones permanently. That said, if the route to Islamabad is still via Washington as some people argue, Bill Clinton’s victory should help the “liberal” Benazir Bhutto more than the “Islamic” Nawaz Sharif in the future.