Counting the change

It can be argued that Musharraf’s tarrying is already bringing the coalition under a strain. The PML-N, for instance, has made it clear to the PPP that it will quit the government at the Centre if the MQM is offered any federal ministries — a delayed reaction to the PPP’s engagement with the Karachi-based ethnocentric party, of which the PML-N had no prior knowledge. The PPP sees it as crucial to come to an understanding with the MQM for it to be able to sail smooth in Sindh. The vote in the province is squarely divided along rural-urban lines, with the major urban centres of Karachi and Hyderabad falling to the MQM and rural Sindh voting overwhelmingly for the PPP. An understanding has been reached with the MQM to make it a coalition partner in Sindh, with the party also retaining its all-powerful governor.

The PML-N and the ANP already see this as a betrayal on the part of Zardari. Memories of the gory drama enacted in Karachi on May 12 last year, in which 42 people were gunned down by MQM supporters in a bid to stop a combined opposition and lawyers’ rally to welcome the deposed chief justice, are fresh in their minds. The Sindh government had also expelled non-resident leaders and banned their entry into the province following the May 12 carnage. The PML-N has demanded an unconditional apology from the MQM, together with a pledge that Karachi will not be made out of bounds for other political parties, for the MQM to be accepted into the ruling coalition. There is no chance that the MQM, which is seen as Musharraf’s Trojan horse, will oblige.

Meanwhile, the recent visit to Pakistan by the US deputy secretary and the assistant secretary of state beginning on the eve of the prime minister’s oath-taking has raised many an eyebrow. It was seen as an attempt by Washington to influence the ruling coalition in favour of their favourite Pakistani, President Musharraf. The media and the politicians, however, denounced the hurried visit in such unequivocal terms that it forced the US officials to go on the defensive, restricting their parting comments to saying that Washington would do all it could to work with the new government. But the damage and the hurt caused by the visit continued, for as the two state department officials departed, a group of US Congressmen and women arrived in Islamabad to enlist the new government’s support for Musharraf.

The ruling coalition trio comprising Zardari, Sharif and Asfandyar Wali told the Americans categorically that they should not expect any future policy on Pakistan’s commitments given on the “war on terror” to be the prerogative of any one man any more. After meeting the Americans, Sharif boldly went to the media to say that Pakistan could not be allowed to become the killing fields for the sake of America’s security. The three leaders have vowed to subject all important policy matters to scrutiny by parliament, the last thing the Americans came to hear. But Western countries and their ambassadors, under American pressure, continue to support Musharraf, even though many have met Sharif, Zardari and Wali since the February 18 election and officially offered their support to the new government. Lately, US officials have even met the defunct chief justice but kept mum on the issue of the judiciary’s independence.

In a country with weak democratic institutions, it remains to be seen where the army’s loyalties lie: with the beleaguered president or the elected government. Going by the MQM’s posturing it can be argued that perhaps all may not have been lost for Musharraf just yet. His loyalist party has hit back at the ANP and the PML-N by saying that they, like the MQM, are also regional and not national parties, as neither has secured much of the vote beyond their respective strongholds of the Frontier and Punjab. The assertion somewhat lessens the stigma attached to the MQM as being the representative of urban Sindh alone.

Talking of apologies over past conduct, which the PML-N demands of the MQM, and the MQM in turn demands of the PPP for launching military action against it in Karachi back in the ’90s, one still eludes: that owed to the former Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah by Nawaz Sharif whose supporters had attacked the supreme court, and Shah was subsequently sent packing. Such are the wages of long bouts of unrepresentative and autocratic rule to which Pakistan has been subjected for the majority of years since independence. Continuation of democratic rule alone can resolve these political schisms ailing the country.

The writer is an editor with Dawn, Karachi murtazarazvi@hotmail.com