A good read. Ziaudin sums up the recent shots in the power game.
http://dawn.com/2007/07/27/fea.htm
Options for Musharraf, Benazir and Nawaz
By M. Ziauddin
DATELINE LONDON
CHAUDHRY Shujaat Hussain was having a leisurely lunch with High Commissioner Dr Maleeha Lodhi on Sunday in London when he received an SOS from Pakistan to rush back for emergency consultations. The PML president was here for an eye operation. But he went back in a hurry without undergoing one, reinforcing speculations that President Gen Pervez Musharraf, having lost all hopes of getting himself elected from the outgoing parliament, was now all set to take the gamble of calling an early election.
On Monday, I had an extended discussion with Mian Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif on the emerging political scenario in Pakistan. And all of a sudden the former prime minister asked me: “When would they need to dissolve the assemblies to hold an early election?” I said there was hardly any time left. He would need sixty clear days. Nawaz said even 45 days would not be unconstitutional. His question intrigued me. Does he know something which I don’t?
And most circles here, including those who have direct access to the top man, believe that the only option left for Musharraf now is to call an early election and join up with Benazir Bhutto after the elections for a new five-year rule, sharing power with the PPP, if possible in uniform.
They see Benazir as still willing to cut a deal with Musharraf even at this late hour, despite the cost she would have to pay in terms of lost votes and rebellion within the party. Benazir on her part appears unruffled and rather relaxed. And she is being visibly wooed in the UK by circles who only a couple of months back would not have given her much time. She is being sought by most of the print and electronic media as well as by the UK’s major think tanks.
On Tuesday, Lord Nazir Ahmad hosted a well-attended reception for her in one of the rooms of the House of Commons. The guest list included a good number of British politicos on the who’s who list. She was accompanied by her son Bilawal and daughter Asifa. While the son appeared to be trying to lose himself in the crowd, Asifa remained very much in tow throughout, joining the small talk the mother was having with various groups and at times listening attentively.
What Benazir is saying these days in public here is simple. The army has failed to tackle extremism. In fact extremism has thrived in the last seven years of army rule. So, the only way out is a free, fair and transparent election and a peaceful transfer of power from the army to a civilian government with an out of uniform Musharraf providing the bridge during the transition. Her staunchest loyalists see the logic and the wisdom in this thesis. But there are many even within her party who do not seem convinced and accuse her of trying to return to power through the back door (and of trying to save her ‘looted millions’) with the help of the very institution which had created the mess that Pakistan finds itself in today.
The PPP leaders who accompanied Benazir Bhutto to Lord Ahmed’s reception included former high commissioner Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Jehangir Badar, Raja Ashraf, Safdar Abbasi, Sherry Rehman, Nahid Khan and Basheer Riaz. But the policeman-turned-tycoon Rehman Malik, the man who is supposed be to talking to Musharraf’s man Friday, Tariq Aziz, on behalf of Benazir Bhutto and who would be hovering around Ms Benazir everywhere she went in public, was conspicuous by his absence which led some Pakistanis among the guests to speculate that perhaps Benazir-Musharraf talks were now over and done with without the two having reached any understanding. That is why, perhaps, Musharraf had called back Shujaat to work on some other options in which Shujaat, and not Benazir, would be the main player, they said.
But what other options are there for President Musharraf now except imposing martial law and continuing to rule through what he calls unity of command? When Nawaz was asked this question during our meeting, he ruled it out completely, saying neither the Pakistani people nor the world would allow him to do this. Nawaz seems to believe that Musharraf would soon be left with no option but to opt out completely from the political scene.
** He agreed with me when I suggested that Pakistan had now become ungovernable and no political party could put things back to normal single-handedly. He seems to be thinking in terms of a national government in the post-election scenario. He also seems to have become a staunch believer in a balanced division of powers between the executive, the parliament and the judiciary, meaningful provincial autonomy, more decentralisation, a free media and keeping the major state organs like the army and civil service in their right place.**
Nawaz disagreed vehemently when told that his new alliance, PDMA, was nothing but IJI minus the ISI, pointing out that the ANP and PONM were also part of the PDMA.
He agreed that the PPP and the PML-N were natural allies and a winning combination against military rule, but said if Ms Bhutto had not violated the Charter of Democracy (CoD) by seeking Musharraf’s help for a share in power, he would not have been forced to form the new alliance.
He sounded bitter while talking about Ms Benazir. We kept denying on her behalf publicly for over a year that she was not negotiating with Pervez Musharraf. And all of a sudden she springs a ‘surprise on us’ when she confirms during a TV interview that she was indeed in behind-the-scene contacts with the general for over a year. We had agreed in the CoD that we would not welcome each others lotas in our parties, but she broke this agreement as well when Begum Abida and Fakhr-i-Imam were inducted into the PPP with a lot of fanfare. All of my advisers had asked me not to go to the house of Rehman Malik (the man who arrested my father) to sign the CoD, but I overruled them and went there in the larger national interest. She promised me herself that the PPP parliamentarians would resign from the assemblies if Musharraf tried to get himself elected from the current assemblies, but in the consensus resolutions that the APC adopted, the PPP introduced a formal note of dissent on this issue.
When at Lord Ahmad’s reception I asked some of the PPP stalwarts accompanying Ms Benazir for an answer to Nawaz’s complaints, I could get only nonchalant responses. Though they all agreed that the ARD should be saved from breaking up but seemed to believe that Ms Benazir was taking the right political decisions and the price she would be required to pay for all these unpopular (unprincipled?) steps would be too small compared to the gains that would accrue in the shape of elimination of extremism from the country and the army going back to the barracks. If only wishes were horses!