[NYTr] A Moment of Clarity for Pakistan

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

China Matters - Nobv 21, 2007
http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2007/11/moment-of-clarity-for-pakistan.html

A Moment of Clarity for Pakistan

by China Hand

For those of you keeping score, the United States has been pushing
Bhutto-Musharraf power-sharing in order to broaden the base of
Musharraf’s support.

Musharraf’s fan club has shrunk to the military core after a series of
political mis-steps, so that vote-rigging any significant success for
his PML-Q party in the upcoming parliamentary elections would have been
greeted with disbelief, derision, and outrage.

Bhutto was supposed to come in, lead her PPP to contest the
parliamentary elections, emerge with enough support to form a coalition
with Musharraf’s party, lead the government as PM and provide a
meaningful civilian endorsement of Musharraf’s rule as president.

And the coalition of Islamicist parties, the MMA, would be kept safely
in minority opposition status and unable to play any significant
power-broker role.

The objective has, as the term indicates, always been
power-sharing—keeping Musharraf in power and giving Bhutto a piece of
the pie in return for her support.

Not democracy.

Which is why the United States and Bhutto have essentially turned a
blind eye toward Musharraf’s ham-fisted efforts to destroy the genuine
constitutional and democratic opposition to his rule: Pakistan’s
independent judiciary and its lawyers.

The narrative got confusing for a while. The power sharing arrangement
hit a bump in the road when Musharraf declared a State of Emergency to
prevent the Supreme Court from disallowing his second term as president.

Bhutto adopted the rhetoric and tactics of the democracy movement to
improve her political standing inside Pakistan and increase her
leverage on Musharraf.

But now clarity emerges. The deal is just about done.

Msuharraf’s new, improved, and hand-packed Supreme Court (still, I
believe, one member short since his regime has been unable to find
enough cooperative jurists to staff it) first threw out the petitions
challenging the presidential elections.

(It wasn’t necessary to throw out the one filed by Bhutto’s PPP, since
they declined to argue their case.)

Nary a peep from the United States or Benazir Bhutto.

Today, additional legerdemain:

via AFP:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071121/wl_afp/pakistanpolitics_071121125207

Musharraf moved to give a solid legal footing to his November 3
declaration of a state of emergency, issuing an amendment to the
constitution which says it cannot be over-ruled in court. ... Musharraf
has pledged to quit the army as soon as the Supreme Court -- now
stuffed with selected judges -- dismisses all the challenges, and
Wednesday's ordinance could accelerate the process by shoring up his
legal position.

Qayyum said the presidential order "has ratified and validated the
action taken on November 3."

Musharraf amended the constitution by fiat.

Solid legal footing, indeed.

The current state of affairs may be good enough for Benazir Bhutto.

Via AP:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071121/ap_on_re_as/pakistan

Bhutto said late Tuesday that it would be a "good sign" if Musharraf
quits his army post, and avoided criticizing him directly. She said her
party needed a few more days to decide whether to boycott the Jan. 8
parliamentary elections.

...though I’m sure a factor in her deliberations is how well her party
is really going to do in the elections now that she has done a pretty
good job of burning her bridges with Musharraf, whose political
apparatus will probably have a say in how many votes she gets, and
where.

But no place at the table, I think, for Nawaz Sharif. It seems
Musharraf has been able to convince the United States that injecting
one ambitious émigré—Bhutto—into the volatile mix of Pakistani politics
is more than enough.

AP again:

Musharraf flew back [to Pakistan] early Wednesday after meeting with
Saudi King Abdullah. Saudi officials said efforts had been made to
arrange a meeting between Musharraf and Sharif, who was ousted as prime
minister by the general's 1999 coup.

A Pakistani official said Musharraf's goal was to prevent Sharif from
returning before the parliamentary elections. Sharif's party suggested
he had snubbed the general.

Meanwhile, the kabuki theater of releasing detained politicians
proceeds, and Musharraf gains the White House seal of approval.

AP again:

Authorities on Tuesday set general elections for January 8 and
announced the release of more than 3,400 prisoners detained under
emergency rule, with another 2,000 to be freed "soon." That step was
welcomed by US President George W. Bush who said Musharraf -- a key
ally in the fight against Islamic extremism -- "hasn't crossed the
line" where he would lose Washington's support.

"I think he truly is somebody who believes in democracy," Bush told the
US television network ABC.

He voiced confidence that Musharraf would restore democracy, saying he
had always found him to be "a man of his word."

In other news, Musharraf, that believer in democracy, continues nailing
the genuinely democratic force within Pakistan—the judiciary and
lawyers—that might interfere with the staged parliamentary elections
meant to consecrate the power-sharing deal (AP again):

Meanwhile, there were fresh arrests Wednesday. Wajihuddin Ahmed, a
former Supreme Court judge who was the only candidate against Musharraf
in the October presidential election, was taken into custody in
Islamabad along with Athar Minallah, an opposition lawyer.

"They were driving a car when men in plainclothes stopped them," said
Minallah's wife, Ghazala. "We do not know where they have been taken."

It looks like the grand U.S. plan for Pakistan is not going to result
in greater stability or democracy.

Turning a blind eye to the suppression of the judiciary and the
shredding of the constitution is not going to enhance the popular
stature of Musharraf, Bhutto, or the United States.

Using a rigged election to pack Parliament with Bhutto supporters may
wean Musharraf away from the Islamic parties and encourage him to
confront instead of conciliate them.

But the rickety and illegitimate power-sharing deal that will put them
there may cause a popular backlash and exacerbate the problems it was
meant to solve.

And, even if Musharraf no longer needs the Islamicist parties in
parliament, the facts on the ground in the Northwest—and the
understandable unwillingness of Pakistan’s armies to conduct the
full-spectrum counterinsurgency that the U.S. is demanding—are unlikely
to change.

At first, I thought l there might be a grander U.S. purpose at work:
restructuring Pakistan’s politics to put civilians instead of the
military at its center; goading the military into more enthusiastic
prosecution of the counterinsurgency and anti-al Qaeda operations on
the border; supplanting China as the great power at the center of
Pakistan’s affections; or even a rapprochement between Pakistan and
India.

Maybe there was.

But whatever the original plans, dreams, and theories; the
fine-sounding pretexts we’re using to sell the idea; or the energetic
spinning by Bhutto’s supporters, the end result looks like little more
than a convoluted backroomdeal that gets Musharraf another term in
office, albeit complemented with a pro-U.S. parliamentary coalition.

We'll have to see if that represents progress, either for Pakistan or
the United States.

Ken Fireman at Bloomberg, in an otherwise befuddled article that
illustrates the contradictions inherent in misconstruing a
power-sharing deal imposed by the United States as a democratic
movement supposedly led by Benazir Bhutto, delivered this money quote:

Kamran Shafi, a retired Pakistani army officer and Bhutto's former
press secretary, said Musharraf is increasingly perceived as a
"Pakistani Tonto" who has been "riding shotgun for the policies of a
very stupid U.S. administration."