For better or for worse, General Pervez Musharraf must pick up the tab for the MMA’s feast of votes. He allowed the mullahs to vent fire and venom at public rallies and exploit anti-American sentiment in the country. But he restricted the moderate PPP and PMLN from reaching out to their voters. He hobnobbed with the MMA leaders and boosted their political credibility. But he blasted the PPP and PMLN and forced their leaders into exile. He approved madrassa “graduates” even as he downgraded madrassa education. But he shaved off a large chunk of non-graduate moderates from the political scene. He bailed out sectarian militants and pitted them against the mainstream parties. But he dragged PPP and PMLN leaders to NAB prisons and blocked their electoral campaigns. Worse, he secretly nudged the religious parties to unite under one banner and cash in their votes but ruptured the PML and PPP so that their voters were rent apart.
In the event, the MMA mustered a maximum of 10% (2.9m) of the votes cast (29.5m) for the National Assembly, up from about 7% (1.4m for all religious party candidates) of the total vote cast (20.3m) in 1993 (in 1997, the Jamaat-i-Islami boycotted the polls). This suggests that although the total vote bank of the religious parties has doubled in numbers (by 1.5m) over 1993-2002, at least 40% of this 1.5m (600,000) is due to an increase in the number of their natural voters owing to population growth as well as to a reduction in the voting age from 21 to 18 years and only 60% (900,000) is due to the autonomous increase in the vote bank of the religious parties based on a shift of voter preferences from the mainstream parties to the religious parties. But a 60% preferential increase of the vote bank of the religious parties amounting to less than 1m voters out of nearly 30m (3.3%) has led to a situation in which they have upped their tally of NA seats from 9 out of 207 in 1993 (4.3%) to 45 out of 272 (16.5%) in 2002, which is an increase of nearly 500% in their total number of NA seats and a jump of nearly 400% in their political stake in the national assembly!
So there it is. Thanks to General Pervez Musharraf’s anti-PPP/PML and pro-America policies, coupled with his constitutional tinkering (an increase in constituencies and a reduction of the voting age), about 1 million voters have changed loyalties, jumped ship and created havoc for the mainstream parties. It may also be noted that, generally speaking, the voter turnout was lower in constituencies won by the MMA (average turnout in NWFP, Balochistan and FATA was 29.5%) than in those in which the mainstream moderate parties won (average turnout in Punjab and Sindh was 42.3%). This suggests that General Musharraf’s relentless harangue against “corrupt politicians” led many previous or potential supporters of the PPP/PML/ANP to stay at home in the borderlands of Pakistan and waste their vote, thereby indirectly giving a fillip to the MMA whose conservative but aggressive voters brushed aside the weak and splintered vote bank of the others.
In many ways, therefore, the MMA’s situation today is akin to the PML’s situation in 1997 when the bulk of the PPP vote sulked and stayed at home rather than switch to the PML while the PML voters came out in their usual strength and swept the NA with a 2/3rd majority in the lowest-ever election turnout (35%). But this also suggests that if the PPP was able to make a significant comeback and redeem the situation in 2002, the MMA need not be here to stay forever, especially since its “sweeping victory” is based on a shift of voter preferences of less than 1m out of 72m Pakistanis. So where do we go from here?
It is best to leave the MMA to its own devices in the NWFP so that both those who have voted for them and those who shirked their responsibility to vote should get a taste of the mullahs’ medicine. Elsewhere in the provinces, one should stick as close as possible to a healthy compromise between the wishes of the voters and the necessities of competitive rather than combative or manipulative politics. Similarly, the grand national interest as opposed to the miniscule mullah sentiment would seem to extrapolate a coalition government that excludes the mullahs from the federal government. They are entitled to sit on the opposition benches as behoves their contrary opinion and minority status without undue support from the chair in both houses of parliament. But will this happen?
Left to their own grubby ways, the mainstream politicians will ally with the devil if necessary to get a slice of the action, irrespective of the stability and welfare of the country. Therefore the buck will still stop at General Pervez Musharraf. If he doesn’t want Pakistan to reap the whirlwind of what he has sown, the cynicism and adventurism of the establishment must stop.