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Cover Story
Power Play
By Syed Talat Hussain
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On the one hand, the country now has a comfortably placed government, a robust economy and a head of state who calls all the shots. On the other, there is a political storm brewing. This time around it is not the opposition that is rocking the boat, but the wrangling and strife within the ruling party that is setting a disastrous course. General Pervez Musharraf's attempt to put a stop to the intense jockeying for power inside the League has been only partially successful. When he summoned three dozen PML(Q) leaders to his camp office in Rawalpindi last month, his refrain was that the League's fortunes would dwindle if it did not stay united. He endorsed a new lease of life for the leadership of the Chaudhrys of Gujarat, firmly discouraging potential coup-makers such as Mian Manzoor Wattoo, Zafarullah Jamali and Salim Saifullah. Under normal circumstances, considering their patron-client relationship with the military establishment, the Leaguers would click their heels in unison as soon as the chief of army staff called them to attention. This has not happened. Many of the leaders summoned to Musharraf's darbar have not abandoned their plans to change the status quo within the party: the plotting and planning continues unabated. The General's appeal for unity has fallen on deaf ears because there is little faith and discipline left in the party, represented by a motley crew united only in the service of self and establishment. One party rebel asserts that his plans to turn the tables on the party leadership have not been nipped in the bud. "I owe no allegiance to the Chaudhrys because they are not interested in accommodating anyone's demands. They are loyal only to their own kith and kin and the whole biradari that they want entrenched in the upcoming local bodies elections. They run to the military at the slightest pretext of a challenge to their authority to cry foul. We have no shoulder to cry on in the establishment. We can only mount an internal challenge," says a leader from the Punjab. Similar sentiments have been expressed by leaders from other provinces. The upcoming local bodies elections have brought trouble within the party to a head. The Chaudhry clan is working overtime to ensure that their men capture the maximum number of districts. "It is not just a question of availability of funds at the district level, which is a sure way to distribute largesse for political gain. Any individual or faction who can line up dozens of district nazims, who in turn can ensure the loyalties of Tehsil and Union Councils to their cause, will be able to bargain with the army for political space at the provincial and national level in the post-2007 set-up. We want to be considered in the discussions already underway as to who can do what to endorse General Musharraf's agenda in the coming years," says an Islamabad-based Muslim Leaguer. But there are other political forces at play. Past masters at the game of gaining from crises, Muslim Leaguers sense that General Musharrraf's political options remain exceedingly limited. The dialogue with the Pakistan Peoples Party has entered a complex stage, where both sides having understood each other's position and agreed on the framework for the elections to be held in 2007, still have a huge trust deficit. "Let me say that most of the irritants have been addressed and both sides (General Musharraf's emissaries and the Peoples Party) have agreed that fair and free elections will be held, through a set-up that is acceptable to all. However, one must remember that there is no love lost between General Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto. Whether or not Ms Bhutto returns to Pakistan and contests the elections, there will always be a simmering unease between them," says a top party leader privy to the negotiations between General Nadeem Taj of the Military Intelligence and Asif Ali Zardari. Party insiders maintain that the PPP's strategy is to be allowed to show its true electoral strength in 2007, and use that fact as a bargaining chip in all future negotiations. There are no long-term commitments to the rules of the game devised by the Musharraf-led establishment. The strategy is simple. Simple enough to be seen through by the military's political wazirs, who are not putting all their eggs into the PPP's basket. Intelligence sources in Islamabad admit that the "understanding with the PPP has been the hardest to sell to the president's closest aides, purely because nobody trusts the party leadership." "In our assessment, the best strategy is to secure political ground and then deal with the PPP and even the MMA," says an intelligence source. This means that no party will be allowed to have full control of the levers of political power, if its mandate runs at the district, provincial and national levels. If the PPP is to run provincial or even national governments, it will have to contend with opponents seated either at the top or at the bottom. This arrangement is not novel. It is already functioning in Sindh, where an MQM governor supervises a PML-coalition government, and the much coveted city of Karachi is run by an MMA nazim. In the NWFP, an establishment governor watches over an MMA government that is constantly troubled by a group of nazims who owe their allegiance to President Musharraf. Balochistan's story is no different. The governor is an appointee of the president, while the coalition government is torn between the MMA and the PML(Q) - a tussle that goes down to the Union Council level. The nationalists, who continue to scorn at the mandate of the provincial government, have thrown a direct challenge to the federal government. This three-way vivisection of the political mandate may allow Musharraf to continue to hold power, even after the 2007 elections, but the whole operation depends on a complex manoeuvre that has its own pitfalls. The Pakistan Muslim League realises the lay of the land and is offering help at all levels. Muslim Leaguers maintain that the party's role in the coming elections is to "secure the ground for General Musharraf where it can," so that "he has to rely less and less on the Peoples Party to govern the country." But this role is not without a price: Leaguers want their pound of flesh in the shape of a government in the Punjab and a very strong presence in the National Assembly. No wonder intelligence sources say that there are maps spread on tables in dimly-lit rooms at this point in time and each seat of every constituency is being studied carefully, right down to the Union Council level. However, any manipulation of the elections to fit a pre-conceived result will unhinge the understanding with the Peoples Party, increase international pressure on General Musharraf and throw economic take-off plans out of gear. A free play of the peoples' votes, on the other hand, has the potential of decimating the PML(Q) and enhancing the power of the MMA, the Peoples Party and the MQM. The latter, in spite of being a coalition partner, has proved a hard nut to deal with. "The answer lies in alliance-building and giving everyone a stake in the system and that is what we are trying to do," says a top negotiator for General Musharraf. The goal may be a pragmatic one, but the path is strewn with huge obstacles. Not the least of which is that the clock is ticking on the option of consensus-building through the power of the uniform, which Musharraf has to doff in 2007. Opposition parties sense this and are keeping an eye on the possibility of politics without Musharraf. Even some members of the Muslim League are taking a "more far-sighted view of national politics." The possibility is nurtured by Washington's stated expectation that the world will not settle for anything less than free and fair elections.
Pakistan seems all set for another bout of political upheaval. |
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