In Pakistan, the revenge of
democracy By Syed Saleem
Shahzad
Incoming results from Pakistan's
general elections on Monday show a landslide
victory for opposition parties with the ruling
party of President Pervez Musharraf and his allies
headed for a crushing defeat. The greatest gains
have been made by the late Benazir Bhutto's
Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and the Pakistan
Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of former premier
Nawaz Sharif. Stinging defeats have been handed to
several stalwarts of the ruling party.
Analysts say the margin of difference is
so decisive that pro-Musharraf forces throughout
Pakistan face an uncertain political future.
Still, as no single party has won an overall
majority, it seems a coalition government will
need to be negotiated once the final votes are
counted.
"All the scripts of the pasts are
now outdated and a new script will
now
be written in which the Pakistan Muslim
League-Nawaz and the Pakistan People's Party will
be at the helm of national affairs in the future.
The set-up will be without ... Pervez Musharraf.
This is what Ms Benazir Bhutto used to call the
'revenge of democracy'," Professor Husain Haqqani,
director of the International Relations Department
at Boston University, told Asia Times Online by
phone from Washington.
"In the end,
Pakistanis voted against the arrogant Pakistani
establishment," added Husain, a former diplomat
and government minister who has spent many years
in exile in the US.
Husain's comments
notwithstanding, the establishment's role is still
important. If the current administration, a key US
ally in the region, can successfully manipulate
the post-election scenario, a successful unity
government with Musharraf as its leader is still a
possibility.
The polls are showing clear
defeats to many staunch supporters and close
confidants of Musharraf, including former minister
of defense Rao Sikandar Iqbal, former railways
minister Sheikh Rashid, and Chaudhary Shujaat
Hussain, president of the Pakistan Muslim League
Quaid-i-Azam (PML-Q). Former government minister
Sherafghan Malik and former foreign minister
Khurshid Mehmood Qusuri also lost their seats, as
did the PML-Q's candidate for premiership,
Chaudhary Pervaiz Illahi, who lost his seat in
central Punjab. These defeats of longstanding
PML-Q leaders, many of whom had previously argued
against including the PPP in a unity government,
could ease the advent of a coalition government.
In Pakistan's largest province of Punjab,
which constitutes 55% of the total 272 seats in
the national assembly, former premier Sharif's
PML-N made a miraculous showing. Despite Sharif
and his brother, Shebaz Sharif, being barred from
campaigning ahead of the vote, early counts showed
the PML-N winning the majority of seats.
"The Pakistani establishment did attempt
to manipulate the results but this can only be
successful when the difference is between five and
six percent. The ratio of difference between the
losers and winners was so big that the
establishment didn't get a chance to manipulate
the results," prominent analyst Dr Ijaz Shafi
Gillani told a Pakistani talk show. Gillani, who
is also chairman of Gallup Pakistan, had found
evidence in a pre-election poll that suggested the
two opposition parties would sweep to victory.
On the morning of election day, Musharraf
issued a statement in which he pledged his
willingness to work in a coalition capacity with
the winner. Analysts have been skeptical of the
viability of his offer.
"I think this
would not be so easy. He has been biased in favor
of a particular party which has lost and therefore
he won't be able to stay in power," said Husain.
The biggest upset occurred in the
North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), where voters
reacted to the "Talibanization" of the region. The
six-party religious alliance Muttahida
Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) which swept 2002 elections on
the basis of anti-American sentiments following
the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, was
almost completely unseated by voters. The secular
Pashtun sub-nationalist party, the Awami National
Party, appears set to win a majority of seats in
the province with other winners being mostly
liberal, secular or moderate. The lack of support
for the MMA clearly shows a lack of faith in the
religious alliance's ability to thwart
"Talibanization".
In Sindh province, the
pro-Musharraf Muttehida Quami Movement (MQM) has
swept elections in the urban centers but the rural
areas have been won by the PPP. The day before the
vote, the MQM changed its position on coalition
governance and one of its top leaders, Dr Farooq
Sattar, announced that his party is ready to work
with PPP. In response, PPP Co-Chairman Asif
Zardari said he would be open to working with the
MQM as coalition partners.
"Whatever the
results are, holding fair and free elections is a
victory of the system. Especially against the
militants who were aiming to sabotage the
electoral process. However, I would call it the
first stage of victory and not the final one. Of
course, the challenge of militancy remains in
Pakistan and now we have to deal with them with
lot of caution," former minister of interior Aftab
Sherpao told Asia Times Online after the
elections.
Analysts claim that this year's
election results clearly reflect popular sentiment
in Pakistan. Contrary to past elections,
family-based patronage, personal charisma, money
and influence did not sway voters who instead
voted along party lines and for political
platforms.
In Punjab, however, the reasons
for victory and defeat were completely different.
In Rawalpindi, the 2007 government raid on the Lal
Masjid (Red Mosque) was the decisive factor for
the PML-N's overwhelming defeat of the former
ruling party. The brutality of the raid, including
the arrest of a top cleric and at least 50 deaths,
was the main issue of the election campaign in
central Punjab.
In an interesting clash of
personalities, the PML-N pitched its biggest
anti-establishment icon, Javed Hashmi, who spent
seven years in solitary confinement on charges of
abetting military mutiny, against staunchly
pro-establishment Sheikh Rashid, who has never
lost in the past seven elections, in the
cantonment town of Rawalpindi.
During the
campaign, reporters often asked Sheikh why someone
known as "the right hand man of Musharraf" didn't
display a single photograph of the president.
Sheikh replied that he was relying on in his
personal charisma and the development work he had
done for his people. Privately, however, he had
been saying that he could not afford to be linked
to Musharraf's legacy - especially after the Lal
Masjid incident - and that's why he was trying to
to distance himself. In any case, personal
charisma failed to carry the day for and the
ruling party was roundly defeated throughout
Rawalpindi and Islamabad.
In Sindh
province, sympathy and outrage over the
assassination of Benazir Bhutto earned a crushing
victory for the PPP.
The Pakistani
establishment had no doubt read the writing on the
electoral wall. Throughout the elections
government leaders kept low profiles, often hiding
themselves behind the curtains of power as they
have been known to do in when faced with true
democracy.
Syed Saleem Shahzad
is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
He can be reached at
saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
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2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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