Eight years and four months ago, a man derailed the democratic system in Pakistan and brought forth a military dictatorship that paradoxically was called not martial law but “another path to democracy”. Promising that he would not allow “the people to be taken back to the era of sham democracy but to a true one,” he refused to provide a date for his departure. Two years later the people were delivered grass-roots democracy in the form of local governments which then slowly unravelled as parliamentary democracy was ushered in. Five years after a controlled democracy was put in place at the national and provincial levels, emergency was imposed to protect the transition to “full and complete democracy”.

After all these years of consecrating democracy in myriad forms and means, the country is still some distance away from being run by a government by the people, if not for the people and of the people. No wonder that all attention is now focused on February 18, the day on which General (retd) Pervez Musharraf has promised to unfold the third phase of what he proudly calls, “the transition to real democracy”. Though still overseen by him à la 2002 elections, the coming polls have allowed a glimmer of hope that they might bring an end to the Musharraf-controlled quasi-democratic political set-up that we have had for the better part of the last decade. The time might have arrived for the resurrection of democracy, no longer plodded on and buffeted by an individual or a section of the state. That Musharraf does not appear to be as much in control as he was five years ago has given rise to these hopes. In addition, the general sense of uncertainty about the outcome of the elections has also led to this optimism. Unlike 2002, this time around the victory of the King’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League – Quaid-e-Azam (PMLQ), is not preordained. Though this uncertainty stems from a number of reasons, one of the most important is the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the chairperson of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), on December 27, 2007. Her death seems to have put paid to the hopes of the pro-Musharraf (read PMLQ) candidates. In some places, especially in Sindh, the public anger and the popular outrage have made it difficult for Q-League candidates even to canvass. The situation in Punjab is far more promising for the PMLQ. But even though the party’s candidates have hogged the best advertisement spots in northern and central Punjab, their victories are far from certain. By all accounts, both Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PMLN) and PPP are making big electoral gains at PMLQ’s expense.

Adding to the PMLQ’s woes is the shortage of food items such as flour and the unreliable supply of electricity and gas. Clearly, the outgoing government is being held responsible for these problems. The party’s advertising campaign has degenerated into many jokes built around these shortages that are doing the rounds through cellphone messages. That the party itself is aware of its public image is already becoming evident. Why else would its leadership start pointing fingers at each other? Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi has already accused former prime minister Shaukat Aziz and some of his federal cabinet members of making a mess of wheat trade to make “bucks”, while those close to the latter have blamed Elahi’s incompetence for the crisis: as the chief minister of the Punjab, he provided incorrect assessments to the federal government about the “bumper wheat crop” in the province which led to the decision to export wheat.

But the inflation and flour crisis are not the only problems the government is confronted with. It also has to contend with the horrendous wave of suicide bombings and terrorist acts that have only multiplied over the last five years. According to the interior ministry’s figures, in 2007 alone, at least 2,000 people died in terrorist attacks. The 56 suicide bombings reported during the year mark an almost ten-fold increase from 2006. And attacks in places such as Islamabad and Lahore have only intensified the sense that the war between the militants and the state is not confined to any particular city, and that it will not spare the citizens either.

But the most important issue for the PMLQ to deal with is the waning willingness among the army’s top ranks to remain embroiled in political engineering on the party’s behalf. The notifications issued by Chief of Army Staff General Pervez Kayani that military officials should not meet politicians are being seen as directed against PMLQ. Analysts are already betting on a speedy dissolution of the party after its ostensible loss of the military’s support. Also, five years down the road since 2002, the party’s biggest asset then – Musharraf – is being seen as a huge liability. The party that once vowed to elect him president for ten times in his military uniform would love to distance itself – if it easily can – from him after he has removed his uniform and has become extremely unpopular across the country.

Many of the party’s candidates appear to be well aware of this. In private, they concede that the most difficult challenge they are facing is their close link with Musharraf. His controversial decisions in the last year – the confrontation with the judiciary, the imposition of emergency in November and the subsequent crackdown on the media – merely added to the long list of public’s complaints against him, and by extension, against the Q-League.

Besides having almost lost this political constituency, Musharraf is not faring well on other fronts either. Speculation is rife on how much support he still enjoys from what once was his core strength: the military. Even if there are no visible signs of the army withdrawing its support for its former chief, neither its patience with him can be unlimited nor its backing always unqualified.

At a time when his popularity within the country is at its lowest, these are not pleasing prospects for Musharraf. A survey conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI), a US-based agency, in November last year, revealed that 75 to 66 per cent Pakistanis expressed dissatisfaction or anger at the current state of affairs and were opposed to Musharraf. “The party [PMLQ] born out of [Musharraf’s] limb is now dying thanks to his unpopularity,” says a PMLQ leader in the Punjab.

The establishment seems to share this view. The Herald has learnt that, prior to Benazir Bhutto’s murder, the intelligence agencies had assessed the PMLQ to win between 80 and 100 National Assembly seats in Punjab, at least 14 in Sindh and nearly a dozen from North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan. These assessments – giving the former ruling party 100 to 120 seats out of a total 272 National Assembly seats – clearly favoured it to form the next government with help from its earlier coalition partners. Since most of its candidates were reported to enjoy influence and support in their respective constituencies, the additional backing of the administration would have made the elections a cakewalk for the PMLQ.

No longer. Intelligence assessments in the wake of Bhutto’s assassination reveal that the PMLQ may not be able to win more than 20 to 30 National Assembly seats, given that the elections are free and fair. Out of these, close to 20 seats will be from Punjab alone. The other seats that the party was earlier expected to win in Punjab will now fall to the PPP and the PMLN in almost equal number.

But the PMLQ has still not given up. In the run-up to the elections, it is blatantly misusing the state machinery to turn the ‘tide’ in its favour. Government officials, who had been specially posted by the outgoing governments, both national and provincial, are openly helping the former ruling party’s candidates.

Take, for instance, Jacobabad district in Sindh. The sister of caretaker prime minister Mohammadmian Soomro is contesting elections here with full administrative backing. In Tharparkar, former Sindh chief minister Arbab Ghulam Rahim is being provided all the state support possible in his electoral battles. In some cases in these areas, polling stations have been set up at faraway places, making it difficult for the supporters of the opposition candidates to cast their votes. In Punjab, Elahi continues to be the de facto chief executive of the province. Most officers, especially in the police force, are providing him assistance and the local government system too is working for the PMLQ candidates. However, for once, it seems that public sentiment may prove to be a far more formidable force than engineering and rigging carried out by invisible hands.

Clearly even the godfather of the party is aware of this. In what is being interpreted as a bid to keep himself politically alive and kicking, Musharraf has reportedly reached out to both the PPP and PMLN. “Both these parties could make [Musharraf’s] life miserable whether they are elected to power or they sit in the opposition,” says an official close to Musharraf.

The Herald has learnt that his emissaries met Asif Ali Zardari soon after the death of Bhutto and proposed a national government for one year, offering him the prime minister’s post. But Zardari declined: senior party colleagues warned him that such a step could split the party. “The government wants to delay the elections because it knows the longer they are delayed, the more difficult it will be for Zardari to keep the party united,” says a party insider.

Once the talks with the PPP failed, the presidential camp tried to woo Nawaz Sharif by holding a dialogue with his younger brother Shahbaz Sharif. But while Shahbaz Sharif went into these sessions to assess the “modalities”, his elder brother turned down the idea of a rapprochement with Musharraf.

In fact, enmity to Musharraf is bringing his foes closer together. Both Zardari and Nawaz Sharif “have spoken to each other at least six times in the past one month. They have promised one another that neither will reach an agreement with Musharraf without taking the other into confidence,” says a PPP party member. So far, both of them are insisting that they will not accept anything less than Musharraf’s exit.

The reason that both the PPP and the PMLN have taken such a stand is that they are convinced that the February 18 elections will bring good news for the two parties. PPP in particular is convinced that if free and fair elections are held, it will win comfortably because of the sympathy wave due to the death of Bhutto, and because of the division of the Muslim League votes in the Punjab now that the PMLN is contesting these elections from a far stronger position than it enjoyed in 2002.

Consider Rawalpindi. Despite his stranglehold over the area, Sheikh Rashid beat his PPP opponent by a mere 10,000 votes in 2002 in a constituency that surrounds the area where Bhutto was killed. On February 18, the constituency will witness a fight between the PMLN’s Javed Hashmi, the PMLQ’s Sheikh Rashid and the PPP’s Amir Fida Piracha. This, the PPP feels, will divide the Muslim League vote, which can work in favour of the former. “Our candidates lost by a small margin on 40 to 60 seats in the Punjab in 2002. Five years later the PMLQ and PMLN will divide the voters between them (more than they did in 2002) and our candidates will be the beneficiaries of triangular fights on these seats,” says a PPP leader.

According to the PPP’s own assessment, the party is set to win around 150 seats provided the elections are free and fair. It has its eyes set on 40 seats in Sindh, about 90 in the Punjab and at least ten more from the NWFP and Balochistan. “The times remind one of 1988, both in terms of the party’s popularity and the attitude of the establishment: they are trying to minimise the number of the seats we win while we are trying to win the maximum,” says Jamil Soomro, spokesman of Bilawal House.

 

In private many of the PMLQ’s candidates concede that the most difficult challenge they are facing is their close link with Musharraf. His controversial decisions in the last year ... merely added to the long list of public’s complaints against him, and by extension, against the Q-League.

Musharraf seems to be aware of this as he is of the fact that if the PMLN and the PPP come into power, his days may be numbered. The parties, too, are making no secret of this. “He has to go, not just because the PPP doesn’t trust him but also because he has become a liability for Pakistan,” says Sardar Assef Ahmed Ali, a senior PPP leader and former foreign minister.

No wonder then that the PMLQ members have started contacting the PPP and the PMLN in a bid to switch sides yet again. According to the PMLN, between 80 and 100 PMLQ members, many of them electoral candidates, have approached the Nawaz faction.

Apart from these calculations and forecasts, there appears little by way of electioneering that can warm people’s hearts. The election process has entered its final phase but it still lacks traditional fervour and bustle. Bhutto’s assassination and the regular memos of the interior ministry that remind all and sundry that most major politicians are under threat have confined most of the political leadership indoors. As a result, there have been no big public meetings, generally witnessed around this time during election period.

The uncertainty prevails not just because of the suicide bombings across the country but also because of the ambivalence about what the elections will bring. With Bhutto’s death looming large over the political scene, there are widespread fears about the country’s future with many seeing the coming elections as a destabilising factor rather than a stabilising one. Even if the elections take place smoothly, the question mark that hangs over the future of Pakistan remains unless the newly elected leadership acts wisely and makes right choices in putting a government together and then running it through the least conflict-prone policies and strategies.

Some of the questions that people have already started asking about the future of the next political phase in the country make an ominous reading. Are we going to watch yet another set of battles of the past once the polls are over? Will the country be forced to go through another few years of short-lived governments as the troika battles it out once again over the spoils of power (“See Do These Elections Matter?”) And will the final phase of Musharraf’s transition to true democracy cost him his “seat of power”? Time alone will tell.