As in the past, elected civilians will be called upon to clean up the mess left behind by eight years of authoritarian rule

Of course all elections matter. Even those in which 90 per cent of the population supposedly votes for the incumbent president, as do all other such trivial and critical processes to select government and individuals. Even rigged elections, or those that are boycotted – especially these – and those that are far from free, fair or transparent, all have consequences. Particularly important are those elections rejected by the voters after the counting of the votes, angry that their right to select candidates had been subverted. Even in Pakistan, which has never been a democracy and has witnessed a mere handful of elections and referendums, we have been witness to a combination of all these outcomes.

Except for three general elections held between 1990 and 1997, the other five elections have all been pivotal. Importantly, each has also been unique, and although there are similar patterns across them, each of the five – 1970, 1977, 1985, 1988 and 2002 – has been distinct in its meaning, nature, form, and especially consequences, resulting in some form of important break or discontinuity with the past. Regardless of what the results are, there is little doubt that the 2008 elections will also bring about a shift in the political processes and in democratic practices of the recent past.

Apart from General (retd) Pervez Musharraf, the principal player in the process which gave the process leading up to the elections meaning and legitimacy, was the late Benazir Bhutto. Had she played a more democratic role in the political processes which unfolded throughout 2007, Pakistan would have been a different country today. In order to come into power, she gave up her democratic mantle and played politics. This difference between the political and democratic is important, and as we have seen throughout 2007, it even came into conflict.

Nevertheless, Bhutto’s political stand of working with the former General made complete sense for well-known reasons debated at length in the press. She decided to accept the rules of the electoral game, subsequently compelling others to respond to her decision. Nawaz Sharif was caught in a bind: while preferring to boycott the elections, he had little choice once Bhutto had made it clear that she was playing the retired General’s game. Now with her gone, the political, electoral and democratic processes, as well as the future of Pakistan, seem very different.

Still the 2008 elections are a major improvement over the tamasha of 2002. For one thing, Sharif will himself be participating, and the Pakistan Peoples Party would have also been at full strength, had Bhutto not been assassinated. There is also the small matter that the chief of the army staff is no longer the president and vice versa. There are other reasons as well – too familiar to go into – as to why Pakistan’s political and democratic map has changed markedly over the last six years. Hence, while the 2002 elections mattered somewhat, mainly to legitimise the then General Musharraf’s praetorian democracy, the 2008 elections matter a great deal because they have the potential to subvert the political settlement in place since 2002.

With the elections being boycotted by a handful of political actors – who are more vocal than they are electable, but important, nevertheless – with allegations and expectations (as well as hope, for some) that the elections will be rigged, and with results that are likely to be contested, the eventual outcome is expected to be unstable. Whether it is a coalition of parties at odds with each other or supporting each other simply to hang on to their victories, or in case there is a strong opposition, the centre is unlikely to hold.

Because of the expected confusion that ought to emerge after the February 18 elections, whichever government comes into office – and it is difficult to speculate who will form the government – will be faced with the worst kind of instability and uncertainty. And it is quite possible that we will return to the 1990s, when governments came and went every few years. In fact, even the very short tenures of that decade will look like periods of tranquility, in comparison.

Moreover, whoever comes into government will be faced with the most precarious balance of power between the presidency and the elected representatives and may have no control of any real levers of power. A military president, even after he removes his uniform, is still temperamentally the same man. A president who dismissed a lightweight prime minister whom he himself selected after just a year, is unlikely to sit easily with anyone who has a legitimate mandate and perhaps, even a mind and agenda of his own. Despite the great desire of some politicians to “work with” the retired General, the parallel streams of power will probably be the most troubling aspect of the new executive.

Worse still is the work that actually needs to be done. The artificial economic boom following 9/11 has run out of steam, and the ‘elected’ government of Shaukat Aziz, or the incumbent government, avoided dealing with any of the numerous real economic problems which require immediate attention. A simple decision over the price of petrol, for example, has been delayed by almost six months, first by the earlier government seeking re-election, and now by a not-so-neutral interim set-up. The first decision that the new-elected government will have to take is to raise petrol prices — certainly not the best way to start a new, highly-unstable, though eventually very short-lived, tenure.

Prior to November 2007, the ‘government’, or at least the decision-making power in Pakistan, was concentrated with one man, who was president, COAS and, in a real sense, the leader of his own political party. The government, by one man, sought solutions to problems of the economy, defined foreign policy, fought so-called militants, and even amended the Constitution. Now, with a weakened president and with multiple (or at least aspiring) centres of power, all such decisions will have to be contested. That power has now shifted, and after the elections, whoever emerges as the first among equals, will need to flex his muscles further. The centre cannot hold, as all things will fall apart.

If these elections do result in confusion and instability, they may end up being of importance for the wrong reasons. They are important as power shifts from one man to other men and women. This certainly is a major transition, and is also a transformation, as it is improbable, that for at least some time to come, we will go back to the pre-November 2007 situation. While it is a tired cliché which states that the process of change is a continuous and permanent phenomenon, the 2008 elections only reinforce that sense of change, pronounced, in so many ways.

Despite the possibility of a probable high level of uncertainty, the only way to actually bring about a substantive change and to put the spirits ruling since October 1999 to rest is for both the two likely winners of the February elections to join forces and reinvent Pakistan, once again. Given Bhutto’s assassination, the unpopularity of the King’s party, and the rehabilitation and acceptance of Sharif in the electoral and political process, a coalition government by Asif Ali Zardari and Sharif may be the only solution to rid Pakistan of its soiled past. Whether this actually comes about will depend on the ability of both individuals and their parties to resist temptation, greed and deals, all of which will probably dominate the post-election scenario.

The fear that some of those who emerge ahead of the pack after the elections may succumb to manipulation and legitimise Musharraf’s political arrangements and prolong his political career is perhaps the greatest. The opportunity to really bring about a substantial democratic transformation in a weakened centre, by those who claim to be democrats, may once again be lost as they opt to play politics. If the future looks more like Pakistan’s sordid past, those of us who earlier insisted on a joint boycott by the two main parties in order to delegitimise and dismantle this halfway house will stand vindicated. For once, I hope we are wrong.