Present tense, fear of future grips Pak

The campaign season has been punctuated by bloody and chaotic events, chief among them the assassination in December of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, the country’s most popular politician. Add to that long-held hatreds, predictions of massive vote-rigging, and a crackdown on opposition groups and the electronic media, and few look to Monday’s polling without trepidation.

If the party aligned with President Pervez Musharraf triumphs despite polls forecasting its defeat, the result could be an outburst of popular anger.

“You see, this is why everyone is so on edge,” said schoolteacher Aisha Ali, serving tea in her sunny garden while the call to prayer echoed from the neighborhood mosque. “Everyone knows that the vote isn’t the end of all this upheaval — it may be just the beginning.”

If the two main opposition parties take the lion’s share of the vote, as polls predict, their leaders would have to overcome long-standing enmity in order to govern together. Politics here are deeply personal, often involving not only blood ties but blood feuds.

The two main opposition leaders illustrate those deep-rooted animosities. Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, took over leadership of her Pakistan People’s Party after her death. If the opposition wins, he could find himself in a coalition with the party of Nawaz Sharif, another former prime minister and a protege of Gen Zia ul-Haq, who deposed and executed Bhutto’s father.

Despite their common stance against Musharraf, Bhutto and Sharif dislike each other intensely, associates of both say — although on the night of Bhutto’s assassination, Sharif rushed to the hospital to pay respects.

Sharif, meanwhile, has telegraphed his own desire for vengeance against Musharraf. In his second term as prime minister, Sharif was ousted by the then-military chief in 1999, jailed on treason charges and exiled. He returned to Pakistan in December, after eight years.

Out on the campaign trail, Sharif calls Musharraf, who was voted to a second term as president by the outgoing assemblies, a dictator whose day has come and gone.

As for Zardari, he has unleashed accusations against Musharraf’s party and government, which he considers complicit in his wife’s death. In an Urdu-language play on the ruling party’s informal name, he calls it the Murderers League.

Musharraf’s supporters, for their part, deride Zardari as a common thief. “Look at these shenanigans of his — who would think of trusting such a man?” said former minister Tariq Azim, referring to a number of corruption charges against Bhutto’s husband.

Even in the face of such mutual mudslinging, some Pakistan People’s Party officials do not rule out the possibility of an accommodation with Musharraf, something many had expected of Bhutto had she lived.

Such a move, though, could set off a backlash from party faithful who would consider it an insult to her memory.

If the main opposition parties secure control of two-thirds of the parliamentary seats, they could move to impeach Musharraf, whose approval ratings have plunged to an all-time low of about 15 per cent, propelled downward by his declaration of emergency rule late last year. During it, he suspended the Constitution and jailed thousands of opponents and judges.

Despite broad public sentiment that Musharraf should resign, any move to oust him would be fraught with peril, said Jennifer Harbison, head of the Asia desk at the London-based consultancy Control Risks.

If there is one point of agreement, it is that it will be difficult for all sides to agree on the fairness and validity of the vote. Human-rights groups insisted beforehand that there was already ample evidence the balloting would be tainted by widespread bribery, intimidation and vote manipulation.

The vote, however, might turn some conventional notions about Pakistan on their head. For years, the commonly held wisdom in the West was that Islamist parties would move to the fore if Musharraf’s grip on power weakened.

But the opposite seems to be true. Opinion polls have suggested that the religious parties, which had their strongest showings ever in 2002’s voting, are likely to fade this time around.