Is there, or is there not, a final deal between General Pervez Musharraf and his ‘friends’ in the Muttahida Majlis Amal which enables the ‘Musharrafian political system’ to be anchored in a stable and enduring Pakistani reality that can be proudly shown off to the world? The perennially cynical will respond with a resounding ‘no’ while evergreen optimists will claim that it is ‘inevitable’. Certainly, the newspapers have been of no help. One day the headlines proclaim that a ‘deal’ has been clinched. The next day the ‘deadlock’ seems unbreakable. How many times have we been told by spokesmen of the MMA that the government has all but signed on the dotted line, only to be rebuffed by someone from the government’s side who insists that the ‘core’ issue of General Musharraf’s uniform is ‘not negotiable’. The problem of credibility has also been accentuated by the presence of so many ‘sole spokesmen’ on the MMA’s side like Qazi Hussain Ahmad, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Hafiz Hussain Ahmad and Liaquat Baloch. On the other benches we have so far had the pleasure of the company of Mr Zafarullah Jamali and Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain. Now Senator S M Zafar, advocate par excellence, has acquired a brief on behalf of the government and Mr Tariq Aziz, the genial right-hand man of General Musharraf, has entered the fray to ensure that his friend’s interests are not bartered away cheaply. Are we then on the verge of a historic ‘breakthrough’?
The MMA has demanded that Mr Jamali should convene a meeting of the heads of the parliamentary parties prior to his departure for the US. Reason: such a meeting should ‘build’ on the ‘accord’ reached between the government and the MMA on the package of constitutional amendments, especially on the Legal Framework Order, and afford legitimacy to it. Apparently, Mr Jamali was expected to announce a date for such a meeting some days ago. But he hasn’t. And that suggests that either his ‘boss’ is not in favour of parleying with the likes of the PML-N and PPP or that the two have spurned the idea. Certainly, the walkout by the parliamentary opposition last Tuesday barely five minutes after the National Assembly had opened would suggest that not all is well, despite the ‘accord’ reached in Lahore last week.
How can it be? General Musharraf’s intense personal dislike of Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif, to whom the two parties are captive, has become a millstone for the proposed Musharrafian system. Between them, the two parties were able to garner more votes than all the other parties in the country in the last elections. And the fact remains, whether we like it or not and however corrupt or fascistic she or he may be, that if both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif could return to Pakistan, they would be welcomed by hundreds of thousands of supporters. So how can we have a stable and enduring political system that excludes these two parties? Recall: General Zia ul Haq’s carefully crafted ten-year system collapsed the day he exited because it had sought to exclude one popular leader. How then can the Musharrafian system be sustained if it seeks to exclude not one but two such leaders and parties? If, God forbid, something were to happen to the lynchpin of this system, the two politicians would catch the first flight to Lahore and take charge of the popular will even before the huddled corps commanders of the Pakistan army had arrived at any decision on how to move forward. This leads to some serious questions.
While the hostility between General Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif is perfectly understandable – it was, after all, a matter of life or death – it is not clear why General Musharraf should so ‘hate’ Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari. It certainly cannot be all about ‘corruption’ – there are, after all, several dubious politicians in the present administration. Is it the slight felt by General Musharraf many years ago when he was DG-MO and was snubbed by Ms Bhutto during a briefing at GHQ? We cannot imagine this to be the case – General Musharraf is not a petty or vindictive man by nature; indeed, on more than one occasion he has simply scowled, shrugged his shoulders and agreed to live and let live with some of his shrillest critics. Perhaps he thinks Ms Bhutto ‘unpatriotic’ for divulging ‘state secrets’ involving certain rigidly held views in the Pakistan army. But this argument can hardly be upheld in the face of the global communications revolution that is sweeping the world in which the ideas of civilian supremacy and ideological freedom are at the heart of the debate.
The time has therefore come for General Musharraf to shed his commando boots and don the apparel of a statesman by acts of inclusion instead of exclusion. He has done a great job of stopping Pakistan from hurtling into the abyss of failed statehood. He must now make the transition from appointed chief of the army to elected chief of the country so that the Musharrafian political and economic system can be institutionalised. That alone will be a true memorial to his services to Pakistan.