The Hindu : Uniting against a dictatorship

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Aug 16, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Uniting against a dictatorship

THE PAKISTAN ELECTION Commission's decision to allow the country's two main political formations — the Pakistan Peoples Party headed by Benazir Bhutto and the Pakistan Muslim League faction headed by Nawaz Sharif — to contest the coming general election merits a reserved welcome at best. Both parties had made a few cosmetic changes in their make-up and/or organisational arrangements so as to qualify for recognition by the Commission under the stricter criteria that have been recently enforced by the military-based Government. While the PPP had cloned a parliamentary wing to serve as its entrant in the electoral race, Nawaz Sharif had been substituted by his brother as the head of their faction of the PML. Since the rank and file of both parties continued to swear allegiance to their true leaders, the minor changes could not obscure the fact that these formations retained their essential character. As such, there was no reason for the military-based Government to have cast aside the intense hostility that it has displayed towards both the parties and there was cause to fear that the Election Commission would find a way to stop them from contesting the polls. If, in deciding to not block the PPP parliamentarians and the PML (NS) from contesting the election, the Commission has indeed shown a measure of independence vis-a-vis the military-based Government, then it is a positive development.

From another perspective, the Commission's decision merits no approval whatsoever since it appears to have emanated from the basic fact that the military Government did not really have any other choice. It would have been absurd to conduct a poll from which the two most authentic formations were excluded and Pakistan can ill afford the international censure that a decision on these lines would have elicited. An election from which forces led by Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Sharif were absent could hardly be described as a democratic exercise in which the people of Pakistan were given a free choice. A Commission and a Government that had conducted a farcical referendum on Pervez Musharraf's continuation as President would have once again covered itself with ridicule. Further, there are reasons to believe that the Commission's decision of yesterday may serve to divert attention from a more sinister game plan already set into motion by the Government. Barely concealing its ideas about the preferred outcome, the Government has cobbled together an alliance consisting of a host of smaller and very pliable parties that will eventually become a "King's party" of the sort that Pakistan's military dictatorships have foisted on their people from time to time. If such a client formation can ostensibly, albeit with the military's full support, defeat the more established political parties it could claim a legitimacy that it would otherwise never possess. In this context, it is welcome news that the PPP and the PML (NS) have at last become aware of their responsibilities and realised their common interest. It has been evident for more than a decade that democratic forces in Pakistan could survive and thrive only if, and when, they learnt to share the political space with each other. Both the PPP and the PML (NS) had frittered away chances to achieve a principled mode of democratic behaviour towards each other when they were respectively in power. These parties have now realised that they have to work together if they are to thwart the military from destroying them and have tentatively begun to explore the possibilities of electoral adjustments inter se so that the "King's party" does not grow into something greater than the non-entity that it is.

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