Opinion

All the Tough Questions: Why Musharraf Is a Safer Bet for Pakistan
By Ahmed Quraishi
Islamabad, Pakistan

The fairest election in Pakistan’s history has restored respect for the Pakistani military, transferred the rising burden of governance to politicians, cut Musharraf’s false allies to size, and empowered the coming parliament to guard Pakistan’s strategic interest in the wider region.
It’s a welcome transition. Only two inherent threats to democracy exist now.
The first one stems from disturbing signals coming from politicians that indicate a desire to pursue politics of revenge. This includes the unnecessary digging into the past — Mr. Asif Zardari demanding an ‘apology’ for the judicial trial and hanging of former premier Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto – from who? – and Mr. Nawaz Sharif demanding the return of a deposed chief justice.
The second inherent threat comes from disturbing secessionist tendencies that may not reflect party lines but were still expressed in indirect ways. The ANP, which is projected to rule NWFP, appears to have closer ties to the Karzai administration in Kabul than to Islamabad. When Pakistan was pro-West during the cold war, ANP was pro-Soviet. And in Punjab and Sindh, Pakistanis were aghast to see PML-Q at one point try to whip up provincialism to counter PPPP’s equally shocking veiled threats of separatism in case of election fraud.
Nationalist Pakistanis were alarmed by the conduct of both parties who later retracted under the force of public opinion — PML-Q apologized openly and PPPP atoned by calling for national unity.
While it has become fashionable to thrash President Musharraf, it is the United States that is in the worst position on the Pakistani chessboard. It’s fascinating to see Washington trying again to prop up Mr. Musharraf when, last year, it tried its best to execute a political coup against him by attempting to replace him with the late Benazir Bhutto.
Now with PPPP falling short of a simple majority by a staggering 86 seats and forced to ally with a nationalist Nawaz Sharif, the Americans must be regretting the day they decided to destabilize the Musharraf administration.
With no party capable of single handedly pushing the US agenda, the Americans are again falling behind Mr. Musharraf as the safest bet. The Presidential Office emerges once again as the only real constant address for US interests in Pakistan and the region. [Mr. Musharraf winked back at Washington, saying US support is still important for Pakistan.]
The one good thing about the new Pakistani parliament is that it is in a position to put up the same kind of opposition to the United States that the Turkish parliament did in the run up to the Iraq invasion. Pakistani legislators, like their Turkish counterparts, are expected to remain sensitive to their voters who are generally angry at US blunders in the region.
At the same time, it is important to mention that no single party achieved a simple majority, let alone an absolute one. It is a ludicrous claim that the entire Pakistani nation voted for specific agendas, like restoring the judges or ousting Musharraf, based on an election where less than half the population voted, in a mandate divided among four or five major parties with different agendas. The majority claimed by the anti-Musharraf parties is really carved out of a minority.
In this case, this result hardly affects the position of President Musharraf. The domestic calls for his resignation in this case are more revenge politics than anything else. The external calls for his resignation, like the one made by US senator Joseph Biden, are better ignored.
Although President Musharraf may not say this publicly, he took a strategic decision to ditch his unfaithful allies in the so called ‘king’s party’ the day he decided to strike a deal with Benazir Bhutto. And for good reason. The PML-Q abandoned Musharraf during all the important crises of the past five years: The A.Q. Khan scandal, the Bugti rebellion, the Red Mosque insurgency, and the ex-chief justice case.
At one point, President Musharraf got so frustrated with the spineless attitude of his allies that he summoned the PML-Q government spokesman and scolded him for not publicly defending the action against Bugti’s rebellion against the State.
President Musharraf has no problem with fluctuating popularity ratings and – by becoming a civilian president – has spared the military unnecessary criticism for tough and unpopular political decisions. He simultaneously understands the concerns of the military and the politicians. If nothing else, this alone makes him a perfect president for the transitional period.
If Mr. Musharraf’s impeachment is a spurious issue, it is not the only one. The question of the restoration of the anti-Musharraf retired judges is another secondary issue that threatens to overshadow the real problems that the winning parties need to focus on.
Some of the winners in the election claim their voters gave them a mandate to pursue these issues. The question is, who is to decide if the PPPP won more votes because of the judges’ issue or because of the sympathy vote after the Bhutto assassination? Who is to decide if PML-N won more seats because of its demand to restore the anti-Musharraf judges or because of the last-minute energy and staple food crises that drowned the ruling PML-Q?
Apart from the genuine calls for an independent judiciary, it is not clear how restoring judges who became politicized and openly vindictive against a sitting president is essential to a functioning democracy. The issue appears to be more a question of settling scores than anything else. A classic case of revenge politics.
Interestingly, some politicians demanding the return of deposed judges are not completely devoid of personal interest.
Take Mr. Nawaz Sharif for example. With one stroke, Mr. Sharif is hoping to get a judge who will remove Musharraf, strike down his disqualification to run for office, and, while at it, remove the ban on third-time premiership. No one can deliver this feat except a judge holding a grudge against President Musharraf.
The only other two names rallying around the dismissed judges, Mr. Aitezaz Ahsan and Mr. Imran Khan, appear more like spoilers than campaigners. They mistakenly chose to boycott the election under the assumption it would be rigged. Now they are trying to blackmail the winning parties with a stark choice: Pay attention to our demands or we will declare you traitors of our cause. Why should the two take part in politics for the next five years when they chose to stay out of the fray?
I feel sorry for the reinvigorated Pakistani civil society because it wants to support genuine democracy and participation but is confused about who to support. The civil society needs to widen its scope of criticism to include, in addition to the sitting President, the rest of the politicians. And it needs to ask all the hard questions.
One question that nobody cared to ask is this: How are we, as Pakistanis, better off by recycling old, tried, tested and failed faces? Why a vibrant nation of 160 million Pakistanis cannot generate new leadership and new faces?

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