Going Deeper
Presidential election in Pakistan
THE presidential election in Pakistan scheduled for September 6 should be of great interest to all South Asian nations because political stability in Pakistan is vital for the politico-economic development of this region.
Though President Musharraf had seemingly given the impression that he was integral to the so-called war on terror, and therefore to the interests of the US and the West, his departure, sought by the people of Pakistan, demonstrated to the West that they could not fight an effective war on terror without the support of the people. And the people of Pakistan reposed their trust in their elected representatives through the elections to parliament and the provincial assemblies held in February.
In the civilianisation of Pakistani politics, Asif Ali Zardari played a crucial role, in conjunction with his wife, the assassinated former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, along with Pakistan Muslim League (N) of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Awami National Party of Afsandyr Wali Khan, assisted by the movement of the lawyers, civil society, and the people. In this transformation of Pakistani politics, MQM and Jamaat-e-Islami of Maulana Fazlur Rahman, who had benefited during the rule of General Musharraf, were also co-participants.
Other things remaining the same, Zardari's election as president appears to be very likely, despite candidates fielded by PML(N) and PML(Q), because PPP and its allies have the requisite number of votes in parliament and in the provincial assemblies that constitute the electorate for the presidential election.
Asif Zaradri, who had spent 11 out of the past 22 years in prison fighting corruption allegations, has shown remarkable political ingenuity in banding together the political parties for the February elections and thereafter in effecting the departure of General Musharraf from the Pakistani political scene.
On the February elections, William Dalrymple (The New York Review of Books) wrote: "To widespread surprise, the elections in Pakistan were free and fair; and Pakistanis voted heavily in favor of liberal centrist parties opposed to both the mullahs and the army. Here, in a country normally held up in the more Islamophobic right-wing press of Western countries as the epitome of 'what went wrong' in the Islamic world, a popular election resulted in an unequivocal vote for moderate, secular democracy."
In the elections MMA, the combine of six Islamist political parties, who had won about 12% of the votes and had 56 members in parliament after the 2002 elections, thanks to their closeness to then military government, won only five parliamentary seats in the February 2008 elections and was comprehensively defeated by the overtly secular ANP in the NWFP led by the grandson of legendary ally of Mahatma Gandhi, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan.
ANP victory demonstrated that, contrary to their image as bearded bastions of Islamist orthodoxy, Pashtun tribesmen are as weary as anyone else of violence, extremism and instability."
Asif Zardari along with Nawaz Sharif and Asfandyar Wali Khan have to be credited for the transformation of Pakistan, ruled by the military for most of the time since its birth in 1947 and described in the Western press as on the way of becoming a failed state or "the most dangerous country in the world" to a democratic country.
It is intriguing that coinciding with the withdrawal of PML(N) from the coalition, the Financial Times revealed medical reports of March 2007diagnosing Asif Zardari with dementia, major depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, raising questions about his ability to guide the destiny of Pakistan.
Such vilification was deplored by parliament member Farhanaz Ispahani, spokesperson of Zardari House, as a relic of the era of dictatorship and personal destruction: "It is a part of Pakistan's past but certainly not its future."
Subsequent medical report had declared him to be "medically fit to run for political office and free of any symptoms." The earlier reports have to be seen in the light of Zardari's long incarceration and his fear of being killed while in captivity. Zardari had shown remarkable fortitude after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto by holding together himself and his children as well as leading the PPP to election victories in parliamentary and provincial assembly polls.
Opposed to General Musharrf's choice of nursing various Islamist guerrilla armies back to health in order to continue to use them against India while pursuing the so-called war on terror the PPP-led coalition government in Islamabad has banned the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) under the Anti-Terrorism Act "for several suicide attacks, including the fresh twin blasts outside the Pakistan Ordinance Factory at Wah killing at least 78 people."
The emergence and consolidation of Pakistani Taliban in the FATA happened when the Pakistani forces were fighting the "foreign" Taliban elements, and in the process ignored the transition of the indigenous elements from Taliban sympathisers to a force fully subscribing to the Taliban ideology.
A political commentator wrote in an article that: "During this process (of Pakistani forces fighting foreign terrorists) the Pakistani Taliban effectively established themselves as an alternative leadership to the traditional tribal elders. By the time the Pakistani government realized the changing dynamics and tried to resurrect the tribal jirga institution, it was too late. The Taliban had killed approximately 200 of the tribal elders under charges of being Pakistani or American spies." The disparate Taliban elements banded together in December last year under the banner of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
Asif Zardari's apology to Nawaz Sharif for the hurt caused to him and his request to Sharif to set aside personal differences and to return to the coalition "in the interest of democracy and Pakistan" is timely and is expected, if reciprocated by PML (N), would help solve political crisis and strengthen the fragile democracy in Pakistan. It remains to be seen whether Nawaz Sharif would bury the hatchet and join hands with Asif Zardari and other liberal democrats to put Pakistan back on an irreversible path towards democracy and development.
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