A ray of hope in Pakistan?

THE SUPREME COURT of Pakistan seems to have raised hopes of a fair deal for that country's civilian leaders who are struggling under a military rule. The apex court has set aside the verdict delivered by a provincial bench against Ms. Benazir Bhutto, a former Prime Minister for long in exile, in a case of alleged corruption. Surely, the latest verdict pertains to a case decided during a democratic phase that preceded Gen. Pervez Musharraf's coup of October 1999. Yet, the new judgment, which calls for a retrial, will turn the spotlight on the style and substance of the military government's prosecution of a twice-elected former Prime Minister. In one sense, Ms. Bhutto, who faces several other cases of suspected corruption, may not be able to count on the possibility of a new accommodation between the civilian political elite and the present military regime. Nor can she see in the judgment itself any ray of hope that the military rule may end sooner than later. From her perspective, such reasoning has much to do with the plurality of pending cases against her and the uncertainties of the practices which the military regime's prosecutors may follow. However, Ms. Bhutto tends to see the prospect of a positive new reality. In her view, the verdict can be a signal that Pakistan's judiciary will not be cowed down by the military dictatorship which, in fact, had argued against her successful appeal in the present case. It is in these circumstances that Ms. Bhutto is now seeking the mystique of a leader of democratic resurgence. However, she knows that her political slate is not clean, given the controversies that she had stoked while in power despite her prime asset of a certain charisma and ability to communicate with the masses. There is, of course, little doubt that she was undemocratically unseated twice in the 1990s, even if the methods adopted were arguably `constitutional' in scope.

What the Supreme Court has now overturned pertains to an adverse verdict that an Accountability Bench of the Lahore High Court had passed against Ms. Bhutto and her husband, Mr. Asif Zardari, in 1999. The conviction was handed down when her prime civilian adversary, Mr. Nawaz Sharif, was still the Prime Minister with the experience of having been dismissed once before. The Supreme Court has not yet spelt out its reasoning. But the judgment itself was preceded by much media speculation about the existence of an audiotape in support of the allegations that the trial court judges had received telephonic instructions from the Sharif administration to punish her. The argument in appeal was that the trial court had sentenced her in a politically vitiated atmosphere. Now, the Musharraf administration is reported to have taken the line that such recorded evidence does not really exist. This aspect may be materially relevant to the retrial which will take place under an accountability ordinance promulgated by the military regime in 2000.

With Mr. Sharif having gone into exile last December in circumstances that remain largely unexplained, it is understandable that Ms. Bhutto should wrestle now with the temptation to emerge as a resurgent votary of civilian rule. The international community, led by the Commonwealth, appears to have sustained the pressure on Gen. Musharraf to restore democracy in Pakistan. So, a cynical question in focus is whether the military, which often prides itself as the messiah of `stability', can seek to co-exist with Ms. Bhutto within the country's current political space. The notion of such coexistence is compounded by the intrinsic contradiction between Ms. Bhutto's wish-list and Gen. Musharraf's choices. The question that the domestic campaigners for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan need to ponder is whether hotch-potch alliances, such as the one now led by Mr. Nawabzada Nasrullah, can at all deliver the goods. It is time for fresh thinking by Pakistan's democracy campaigners.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Opinion
Next     : Expanding Universe