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 Parties opposed to President General Pervez Musharraf have won a
sizeable number of seats in the race for a new national
parliament and the four provincial assemblies.
The strong showing of the Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), an Islamic
coalition of six fiery anti-Western religious parties, will
definitely
change the dynamics of Pakistan's politics as the MMA appears
to hold the balance of power.
Significantly, the pro-Taliban MMA has registered a clean sweep
in the Pashtun belt that borders unstable Afghanistan, and which is
mostly anti-US, with it winning sufficient support to
single-handedly form the provincial governments in Baluchistan
and the North West Frontier Province. Both these provinces had
provided critical logistics and support to the US-funded Afghan
jihad(war) against communist Russia.
Qazi Hussain, the head of the
Jamaat-i-Islami, one of the best organized parties in the MMA, wasted no time
in calling for the closure of all US air bases in Pakistan,
against a background of small arms being fired into the sky and
banners proclaiming anti-US sentiments. He also
sounded a warning to the Western media: stop defaming Islam.
Pakistan Muslim League Qaide Azam (PML-QA),
supportive of President Pervez Musharraf and referred to as the
'King's Party', has won 80 seats
followed by 62 bagged by Pakistan People's Party
Parliamentarians (PPPP)- a wholly owned subsidiary of Benazir
Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party. MMA- the anti-western alliance
of Taliban-supportive religious parties won 52.
Independents 26! And, PPPP's present political partner PML(N) won
only 14 seats.
"Thank you, General Pervez Musharraf, for delivering
us from the likes of Nawaz Sharif and handing us over to Qazi
Hussain Ahmad and Maulana Fazlur Rehman," said Friday Times,
a lone moderate voice in the otherwise conservative
Pakistani media.
"The MMA will be an unprecedented integral element of the
National Assembly in days to come. It may well be a partner in
the government of Pakistan in Islamabad as well. But, to be
sure, it will form the next two governments in the two provinces
of the NWFP and Balochistan. In a third, Punjab, it will be a
critical part of the ruling coalition in alliance with any one
faction of the PML or possibly even with the PPP. And in Karachi
it will stage a significant comeback since its ouster in 1981 "
voiced Friday Times.
Such apt and fast opinion declaration by a highly respected
news media actually reflects the thought-process of a small,
affluent but very powerful Pakistani elite who traditionally
look towards the west for its intellectual survival. Ironically,
its influence on Pakistan politics is larger than its sheer
size.
The president of the PPP, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, is in London for
discussions with Bhutto, who was barred from contesting the
elections herself pending charges of corruption. Prior to his
departure Fahim had talks with General Musharraf and the
all-powerful ISI in which it is
reported that Fahim was offered the premiership if his party
formed a coalition with the PML-QA and the independents. This would prevent the MMA
from exercising their newly created "nuisance value", as one
analyst put it. Whether this idea would turn into a
reality is as open a guess as the future of Pakistan's politics
itself.
Western powers, albeit 'the coalition against terror', may have
blessed this idea, given the seriousness of the Western
coalition's interests in the turbulent South-Asian regional politics.
It is a fact that the West will continue to sit in Afghanistan to protect their
realigned geo-political interests ever since
communist Russian empire disintegrated into smaller
independent pro-capitalist nations, thereby throwing open the
battle to control access to the Central Asian resources.
Whether Washington likes it
or not, American policy is seen as anti-Islamic and the campaign
against Al-Qaeda and the Taleban is viewed as a campaign against
Islam. More than anything else, that is the message that the US
must take from the unexpectedly strong showing of the MMA.
General Musharraf, who will definitely remain Pakistan's president,
and West's 'ally against terror' for another five years, is
clearly keen to get an assembly with which he (and the western
powers specially the US) can work, but
should this not be the case, he(and the US) have other options.
In short, the rules of the Pakistani game may be dictated by
the policies of the West!
After the
elections a new military-dominated national security council
will take all key decisions - on foreign policy, Pakistan's
nuclear weapons and its relationship with the West and India. Musharraf will
head the council, with other service chiefs. He has also given
himself the power to sack the new prime minister and dissolve
parliament. In short, assuring a cooperative Prime Minister and
a moderate government will provide the neccessary insurance to
maintain continuity of steps taken by the military junta.
A founding member of PPP, has been quoted having said that the party had
traditionally won elections on anti-US sloganeering. This time,
however, with Musharraf taking Pakistan into the US camp in its
war against terror, the PPP chose not to speak out against the
US - in fact, it gave its support to the US agenda in the
region.
That might have set the stage for a western-backed Musharraf-PPPP cooperation.
But PML-QA, which is the 'King's party' notched the top slot contrary to pre-poll
projections which had said PPPP would emerge as the single largest
party.
That does not mean Musharraf's coterie of political pundits did
not advice him to approach PPPP to form a coalition with PML(Q)
albeit 'King's Party', and
other like-minded moderate groups in order to counter MMM's
rise as a national political force in the otherwise turbulent political scene.
Given the fact that MMA will definitley form state governments
in the two northern provinces of NWFP and Baluchistan and will
choose to run the affairs of their provinces on a striclty
Islamic line, Musharraf's move to create "strange bed-fellows"
on the national level is a shrewd and meaningful move but
is short-sighted and may not work in the long run!
Indeed, the MMA has wiped
out the two mainstream moderate political parties - the PPP and
the PML - from the scene in the NWFP and Balochistan. The vacuum
created by Musharraf is a direct result of his pursuit to keep
the two national politicians out of the political arena. The
collateral damages have shown up.
Thanks to General Musharraf and President George Bush, whose pre-emptive
anti-Taliban and anti-al-Qaeda policies (read anti-Islam) were
equally responsible for nudging the
 conservative and deeply
religious people of these areas into the arms of the MMA. The
irony is that when Qazi Hussain Ahmad and Maulana Fazlur Rehman
control the levers of power in the frontier regions, including
the police and administration, it will become difficult for
Islamabad and Washington to enforce their writ in these areas
and the task of hunting down the rebellious Taliban and hostile
Al-Qaeda will become almost impossible. We may also expect both
provinces to unfurl so-called shariah practices that reinforce
the negative “image” of Pakistan abroad.
When the establishment got rid of Benazir Bhutto in 1990, it made way for Nawaz Sharif. When it
got rid of Sharif in 1993, it made way for Bhutto. When it got
rid of Bhutto in 1996, it made way for Sharif. But when
Musharraf got rid of Sharif in 1999 and started to hound Bhutto
as well, he made way for the MMA.
Maybe
this is just what Musharraf and his team wanted:
1. Two critical
provinces bordering Afghanistan with the anti-America MMA so
that the establishment can drive a hard bargain with Washington.
2. Coalition governments in the other two provinces in which
pro-establishment minorities or majorities can keep “democracy”
in check.
3. The armed and unarmed jihadis inside and outside the
establishment should be pleased by the election results. Having
“lost” Afghanistan, they have now acquired a large base area of
their own in their own homeland. They couldn't have tailored a
better outcome for themselves.
That is why, in time to come,
this “election” may acquire the same ominous significance in the
history of Pakistan as the 1970 elections under another
“sincere” military dictator.
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