NEW JERSEY, AUG 28 - President
General Pervez Musharraf has reportedly agreed to resign as military
chief in exchange for support from Benazir and her Peoples
Party for
his re-election as President for another five years.
If he succeeds in doing so, backed by his Western allies
and the army, he will most likely become the "longest
serving dictator" in Pakistan's history. He is already on
the verge of making history by having forced the completion of
five years of the present Parliament, that
provided him uninterrupted political power supply.
How an average Pakistani will react to
the unthinkable "marriage of convenience" between the two
opposing personalities is any body's guess. But it is sure
to
make the West happy, while many in Islamabad's corridors of
power will be in a state of "shock and awe".
The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) senior official and member
National Assembly (MNA), Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, who recently rose
to prominence as the restored Chief Justice's legal counsel, has
his own take on the matter.
According to him, "Benazir Bhutto was a “genius politician”
who knew that a deal with President General Pervez Musharraf
would be a high-cost-venture for her party as the deal would
give birth to a severe public criticism."
But this has not been the reason why negotiations were being
held in so much secrecy or why it continued for so many
months now. Benazir's insistence on dropping of charges
against her and her spouse, withdrawal of bar on her third
term premiership, doffing of uniform, etc. were the
milestones of a roadmap that was already agreed upon much
earlier in the game. But as a logjam appeared on the
political horizon, both parties seemed to taked advantage of the other's
anxiety to put their ducks in a row lest the declaration of
a "happy reconciliation" turned out to be an "unhappy
marriage" which many consider inevitable any way.
The General and his
supporters, both internal and overseas want to make sure
there is "continuity" and "unity of command" in "war on
terror" even if the marriage eventually breaks. The exit
strategy is more important than the engagement in which the
stakeholders are many and the stakes quite high. The insurance:
Musharraf must remain the President for another five years
at the very least.
Benazir thinks, on the other hand, that she must make a come back soon if she
wanted to remain a serious player in the country's politics
and save her diminishing vote bank from disappearing totally. That's her real
take. However, with her return, the General and his
supporters (read the US) expect that there will be an exponential dissipation
of the highly charged political atmosphere already taxing
the country. Thus, the intense dialogues with many invisible
parties involved.
On being prodded, the General has finally offered to doff his uniform prior to
becoming President for another term. But he and his
supporters want him to retain the
"unity of command". The issue was reportedly discussed
threadbare at
the meetings between his aides and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in
London. Benazir said today in an interview
to a UK-based newspaper The Guardian that while the deal was not
yet complete, the "uniform issue is resolved."
The two exiled leaders, Benazir and
Nawaz Sharif of PML(N) have been approached separately for the "grand reconciliation",
to be followed with a round table conference of politicians, and
a caretaker
government. But with Benazir being the strongest opponent of
the General's plan to keep both his military and political
positions, the
atmosphere has become charged with suspense and uncertainty.
Benazir knows that she is wanted back in the country more
than she had imagined.
Meanwhile, surprisingly, Nawaz Sharif's guns have gone silent
except for a puff yesterday that said he would return to
Pakistan, come what may before Ramazan that starts on or
about September 13. That's only 2 weeks away and there are
no flurry of activities to demonstrate that he really means
business.
Khalid Luqman, former President of PML(N) USA and
presently the Vice President of the party's International Affairs
division, told DesPardes.com, "the party is meeting tomorrow (Wednesday August 29) and by
evening New York time, it will finalize Mian Sahib's
return to Pakistan before Ramazan". I can vouch for it, as I am
going to accompany him too", he said.
But even if Nawaz Sharif decided to do so, "he can't fly
direct to Pakistan from the UK. He has to go either to Dubai
first or elsewhere, and then to Pakistan", said Mian Zahid
Ghani, a New York based Pakistani journalist who is close to
the Sharif camp.
Benazir Bhutto is said to
have kept her senior party leaders in the dark regarding her
talks with the special emissary of President
Musharraf. Confirmed reports have said that the General's aides were
lodged a stone throw away from her chief confidante
Rehman Malik's lodge, who himself is a retired intelligence
chief (FIA) settled in London but who maintains links back home. Secret sessions went on almost round the clock
with Benazir's uninterrupted availability and attention to
details as the two sides went back and fort and haggled the
finer points.
According to party sources, the chairperson has been in London since
last week, meeting various British lawmakers, as well as the
president’s emissary Tariq Aziz and the senior military
leadership including the premier spy agency ISI's chief. But despite the fact
that all senior party leaders had reached London to attend
the joint meeting of the Central Executive Committee (CEC)
and Federal Council (FC), she had not taken anyone into
confidence regarding the talks. The joint meeting which was
scheduled for August 28 has been moved to August 31 with chances of
another postponement with a reported last minute demand by Benazir.
At a function organized by the Pakistan Society of the
London School of Economics, when asked why he had met Nawaz
Sharif and not Bhutto while in London, Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan,
reportedly deflected the
question by saying Benazir was busy in talks with the
government emissaries and would meet him in the PPP’s
central committee meeting on August 31. Aitzaz also said
Bhutto had not discussed with him her Abu Dhabi meeting with
Musharraf. She has reportedly not discussed with many
either. Many are unhappy.
A senior party leader who wished to remain unnamed told
Daily Times from London that it was up to Benazir to
decide what steps should be taken and when, but she should
have taken the senior leadership into confidence.
Chaudhury Aitzaz reportedly spent three hours having lunch
with the Sharifs and reminiscing his solitary days in jail with the
brothers
after Musharraf's comrades staged a bloodless coup in
October 1999 and installed the General in place of Nawaz.
“President Musharraf does not seem to see the year-end and
September will be turbulent for him,” Aitzaz told ARY
channel in an interview telecast today. Does Aitzaz seem to
know something which Benazir does not know? Or, is it that
he has a better
feel of the pulse and the ground realities?
"May be, after all he has come
out strong, seasoned, with many new friends who look up to him
along with the restored Chief Justice as Pakistan's modern day
Robin Hoods", said Dhamee, a Pakistani-American resident of
New Jersey.
The Sharifs owe their success of carrying out the
recent judicial
coup against Gen Musharraf to no other person than Aitzaz . Without the CJ
restored, in which Aitzaz played the key political and legal
role, Sharifs would never have gotten a verdict from the
Supreme Court which they had tried at one time to
bamboozle.
Meanwhile, the negotiators of Gen Musharraf — Lt Gen Ashfaq
Kiani, Lt Gen (retd) Hamid Javed and Tariq Aziz — are said
to have returned to Islamabad to convey Benazir's two days
ultimatum to the General to settle all other matters. She
wants these settled before Aug 31 when her party meets.
Otherwise the deal is off, she has said, but it seems she is
hopeful the General will come through the deal.
While Sharif wants no truck with a uniformed or a
non-uniformed Musharraf in power, Benazir has compromised.
She has already said that the President was always the
Commander in Chief of the armed forces. But by doffing the
uniform, Musharraf will make way for those "who have been
waiting to get promoted", she has said - a clear indication
that she was trying to reach out to the young Turks and to
those brasses around the general who are waiting to get
promoted.
Musharraf seems to have check mated her moves though by
saying he would not let his eight years of efforts go waste.
A veiled threat? Or just a macho outburst? Many think it was
a serious message, including PPP stalwart Amin
Fahim
who told reporters it would be "martial law which we do not
want".
In the meanwhile,
Benazir has put forward five conditions to the government
camp. She wants Musharraf to announce to doff his uniform
and name his successor too; giving the politicians indemnity
across the board without any discrimination before they
return to Pakistan; selection of members of caretaker
set-up; balance between the powers of the president and the
prime minister; free and fair elections, and doing away with
constitutional clause which bars her and Nawaz Sharif
from holding office of prime minister for the third time.
In return, the government camp is seeking support of her
party in the National Assembly to bring about a law to stop
the Supreme Court from banning Musharraf from
contesting elections in uniform and striking down of the
clause that stops any government servant from taking part in
politics for two years.
Bhutto wanted a complete constitutional package to be put
before parliament for required changes in the law that might
support both the parties in their own political interests.
"Benazir wants to tell the people that she
had forced Musharraf to take off his uniform, and she would
go back to Pakistan with the impression that she was the one
who had brought Musharraf to his knees," said an observer.
Once the Musharraf-Benazir agreement is made public in the next few days,
it will supposedly preempt Nawaz Sharif's attempt to
destabilize the setup with his
return. But with the agreement in place, Nawaz will actually benefit
too. With the amnesty, he will have corruption charges
against him automatically dropped. He would also get a
level playing field for his party to contest polls and would
regain the chance to become the Prime minister for the third
time, if his party garners enough support in the assembly.
This is doubtful at this time though, remarked one observer
who has been close to him.
But it is a win-win situation for Nawaz Sharif though, many think.
"So he is letting Benazir Bhutto do the bidding. She can get what
he can't get from the General(s), and he knows that", said one
analyst.
Come September, we may see a big happy family out there, or Dum a
Dum Mast Qalander!
Have your say >
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