Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif have finally broken the ice. The old protagonists, who once vowed to cut each other up and throw the pieces into the Arabian Sea, are now acting like long lost buddies. Apparently seven hard years under General Pervez Musharraf have persuaded them to bury the hatchet and make common cause against him. A Charter of Democracy (CD) was unfurled in London last week amidst much self-righteous fury. It purports to be a mission statement on how to get rid of General Musharraf and make sure that the army is never again able to carry out a coup against the democratically elected leaders of Pakistan.
The two leaders say they will not contest the next elections under General Musharraf’s tutelage. Does this mean they will not contest unless there is a national caretaker government independent of General Musharraf in charge, including a chief election commissioner acceptable to them? Or does this mean that General Musharraf would have to be thrown out of power before such a national government can be constituted to hold free and fair elections? The first scenario requires the emasculation of General Musharraf while the second is contingent upon his very ouster. But in the current situation, each seems like a tall order. It is doubtful that from the comfort of their London flats Mr Sharif and Ms Bhutto can rouse the masses and bring the regime to its knees via a long drawn out popular revolt. So they will have to brave a return to Pakistan and take their chances
Unfortunately, their response to this dilemma isn’t terribly encouraging. Neither is prepared to say when he or she will catch a flight to Lahore en route to Kot Lakhpat jail. All they can say is that they will return some time before the proposed elections. But that is a non-starter. If they are not ready to announce a firm date well ahead of that deadline, how on earth do they propose to organize the masses and beef them up for knocking out General Musharraf, initiating a national caretaker government and reforming an independent election commission? Nor have they addressed the issue of how they intend to achieve their objective if they are fated to cool their heels in the clink. The only way out, it seems, is to wait for some sort of crisis to develop independently of them and then jump in and try to exploit it. But how will such a crisis develop? Who will create it and when? And what if General Musharraf is able to ride out the storm and they end up paying for their miscalculations?
The only explanation for their feigned optimism may be the expectation that the Jamaat i Islami will whip up a storm before the year is out and play into their hands. Certainly, Qazi Hussain Ahmad has rolled up his sleeves and is itching for a showdown with General Musharraf. He means to exploit the anti-American and anti-West sentiment in the country. But three questions arise. One, will he be able to take along the JUI which has many vested interests in the status quo. Two, even if the MMA is able to field tens of thousands of people here and there, will they be able to sustain violent agitation over a prolonged period to make an impact? Three, if the MMA is successful to a point, why should it allow BB and NS to harvest the fruits of its labour? We might recall that the MMA “used” the threat of the PPP and the PMLN to obtain a profitable deal for itself from General Musharraf in the last elections. What is to stop it from following the same strategy again?
The weakest link in the chain proposed is their inability to formulate their own long term relationship. When BB asked NS to denounce the corruption cases he had trumped up against her as prime minister from 1997 to 1999, he flatly refused. In other words, he sees her as no less an obstacle to his return to power than General Musharraf and means to exploit the corruption charges to knock her out as soon as the coast is clear. This isn’t exactly a propitious sign of their determination to restore “democracy” and rule of law rather than resort to victimisation and vindictiveness all over again.
It is also unfortunate that neither had anything concrete or original or inspiring to say about the problems that bedevil Pakistan’s quest for democracy. There is no solution to Waziristan or Balochistan in the CD; there is no sure footed proposal to separate the judiciary from the executive; there is no national security strategy to compete with the one offered by General Musharraf; there is no statement on how to deal with the war on terror, America and India.
The media may have gone overboard projecting the CD as a turning point in the politics of Pakistan. There is no evidence as yet that BB and NS are getting “real” about democracy. If anything, it is more likely that the real game of secret negotiations with General Musharraf will begin in earnest now in the hope that one of them will clinch a deal with him and ditch the other before long.