World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org

Pakistan’s leading opposition parties to form national
coalition government
By K. Ratnayake and Keith Jones
23 February 2008

In opposition to the wishes of the Bush administration, Pakistan’s
two principal parties, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)
and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), agreed Thursday
to forge a national coalition government and like coalitions in
the country’s four provinces.

In Monday’s election—an election European Union observers
admit was skewed against the PPP, the PML-N and other opposition
parties—the PPP won about 33 percent of the seats in the
National Assembly and the PML-N 25 percent. In the provincial
elections in the Punjab, which is home to the majority of Pakistanis,
the two parties’ positions were effectively reversed.

The PPP, the PML-N and a smaller party with which they have
agreed to ally, the Pashtun-based Awami National Party, are all
avowed opponents of President Pervez Musharraf, who seized power
in a 1999 military coup and subsequently became a pivotal US ally
in the “war on terror.”

After years of promising that he would preside over a return
to democracy, Musharraf imposed martial law for six weeks late
last year so he could install judges who would give a legal stamp
of approval to his unconstitutional reelection as president till
2012. Emergency rule was also used to impose draconian restrictions
on the press and intimidate the opposition in the run-up to national
and provincial assembly elections.

Opinion polls have long shown that the vast majority of Pakistanis
want Musharraf to resign and that the US government is reviled,
both because of its support for a succession of military dictatorships
in Islamabad and because of its invasions and occupations of Iraq
and Afghanistan. The December 27 assassination of PPP head and
prime ministerial candidate Benazir Bhutto provoked a national
upheaval, in which rioters attacked symbols of the Musharraf regime,
including government facilities and offices of the pro-Musharraf
party founded by the military, the Pakistan Muslim League (Q).

Yet, according to press reports, the Bush administration was
shocked by the PML (Q)’s debacle in Monday’s elections.
It has been scrambling ever since to try to shore up support for
Musharraf.

This has involved both repeated statements from US officials
praising Musharraf and urging Pakistan’s incoming government
to work with him, and behind-the-scenes pressure on the PPP to
forge a government that includes the PML (Q) or other parties
that have been allied with Musharraf, such as the MMA, an alliance
of Islamic fundamentalist parties, and the MQM, which claims to
represent Pakistan’s Urdu-speaking mohajir community.

The Pakistani daily The News has reported, “Sources
in [the PPP] confirmed that the Americans had brought tremendous
pressure on the PPP co-chairperson to make a coalition government
with the likes of the PML-Q and MQM, but not with the PML-N.”

This involved the US Ambassador to Pakistan summoning Bhutto’s
widower and successor as PPP chairperson, Asif Ali Zardari, to
the US embassy on Wednesday. For much of last year, Bhutto was
in discussions with Washington about a possible partnership with
Musharraf. But a three-way deal could never be consummated because
of opposition from Musharraf and his allies and the swelling popular
opposition to the military-controlled government.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz—which, as its name suggests,
is built around its leader, Nawaz Sharif—was excluded from
the Bush administration’s attempt to give Musharraf greater
popular legitimacy through a deal with the opposition. Sharif,
his right-wing politics and close connections with the Saudi royal
family notwithstanding, has been viewed warily by the Bush administration
because of his personal enmity toward Musharraf, who deposed him
as prime minister in 1999, and because of his ties to the Islamic
fundamentalist right.

On Thursday, after it became apparent that Zardari and Sharif
were going to forge a partnership in defiance of US wishes, George
Bush telephoned Musharraf. No details of their conversation have
been released.

But speaking from Brussels, US Undersecretary of State for
South Asia Richard Boucher reiterated the US’s support for
Musharraf. “We look forward to working with President Musharraf
in his new role,” declared Boucher. Ignoring the dictatorial
methods Musharraf used to reelect himself, Boucher said, “He’s
now a civilian president.”

Nawaz Sharif and much of the Pakistani press have called on
Musharraf to step down, but he is vowing to remain as president.
He has also declared that any attempt by parliament to restore
the 60-odd Supreme and Superior Court judges he purged last November
under his martial law regime would be illegal.

In a move patently designed to put pressure on Zardari, the
Pakistan government this week officially urged the Swiss courts
to expedite a 10-year-old corruption case against the PPP leader.
Zardari, who is notorious for having extracted kickbacks on government
contracts during his wife’s second term as prime ministers,
is alleged to have $55 million US in kickbacks ferreted away in
a Swiss bank account.

At their joint press conference Thursday, Zardari and Sharif
did not categorically commit to moving against Musharraf by impeaching
him for his repeated violations of the constitution or by seeking
to restore the purged justices. They said these matters would
be decided by the incoming parliament.

Sharif said that “in principle there is no disagreement
[between the two parties] on the restoration of judiciary. We
will work out the modalities in the parliament.” But this
left begging the question as to whether all judgments made by
the justices installed by Musharraf, including their ruling that
his election as president last October was constitutional, will
be declared null and void.

Sharif said bluntly that Musharraf should resign. But the media
noted that Zardari’s position was far lass categorical. He
merely said the “mandate of the people is clear.”

Unquestionably, there is great popular pressure for the incoming
government to act against Musharraf. On Thursday and again Friday,
lawyers staged demonstrations demanding the reinstatement of the
purged judges. In several cities these protests were attacked
by security forces.

With an eye to Washington, the PPP leadership has never excluded
the possibility of working with Musharraf. But PPP leaders have
conceded that Sharif’s more muscular anti-Musharraf stance
was a major factor in the PML (N)’s strong showing in the
Punjab in Monday’s elections.

Zardari and Sharif did say that they want the pre-October 1999
constitution restored.

Musharraf rewrote the constitution to increase the powers of
the president and give the military, his principal bulwark of
support, a permanent and decisive say in the shaping of government
policy through a military-dominated National Security Council
(patterned after that in Turkey). The president’s powers
include the right to sack the prime minister and dissolve parliament.
He is also officially the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

Asked if pro-Musharraf elements would be included in the PPP-led
government of “national consensus,” Zaradari said, “There
is no pro-Musharraf group or political party in the country.”

But Sharif, in an attempt to strengthen his hand in negotiations
with the PPP, is said to be urging persons elected as members
the PML (Q) to defect to his party. In the case of many, this
would constitute returning to the fold, since the PML (Q) was
formed principally from members of Sharif’s party who threw
in their lot with Musharraf after his 1999 coup.

Zardari and Sharif were, if anything, even less clear about
how they intend to deal with the crisis now wracking the economy,
which in recent months has taken the form of spiraling food prices
and flour and electricity shortages. It is common knowledge in
elite circles that the new government will have to take unpopular
measures, including sharply raising the price of oil-based products.

If neither the PPP nor PML (N) said much about their economic
plans during the election, it is because they agree with the neo-liberal
orientation of the Mushararf regime.

One of the few concrete things the two parties have agreed
on is to call on the UN to investigation Benazir Bhutto’s
assassination.

Conceding that there are many contentious issues that separate
the PPP and PML (N), an aide to Zardari said that the two parties
recognize protracted negotiations will be necessary “to deal
with nuts and bolts on ways to reconcile Nawaz Sharif’s position
with our views.”

The Bhutto and Sharif families and their respective parties
have long been bitter political enemies. During the 1990s, Sharif,
who began his political career as a protégé of the
military dictator General Zia ul-Haq, twice worked in tandem with
the military and government bureaucracy to unseat Benazir Bhutto
as prime minister.

Bhutto, for her part, initially welcomed Musharraf’s coup
against Sharif. Last year she broke an alliance with Sharif and
his PML (N) in preparation for striking a deal with the dictator
Musharraf.

And while the two parties now talk about jointly leading a
crusade for democracy, they both defend the grossly unequal capitalist
social order that it is at the root of Pakistan’s stillborn
democracy. The Bhuttos are themselves one of the great landlord
families of Sind, while Sharif is the scion of wealthy industrialists.

When they formed the government in the past, both the PML (N)
and the PPP sustained Pakistan’s decades-long military-security
alliance with Washington and neither is willing to challenge it
now.

Sharif no doubt garnered votes by attacking the US during the
election campaign for its steadfast support for Musharraf. But
only last November in a Washington Post op-ed piece, he
proclaimed the US to be Pakistan’s “natural ally.”

If the US is clutching to the beleaguered Musharraf, it is
above all to guarantee the Pakistani officer corps—which
is anxious to maintain both its position at the center of Pakistan’s
government and its extensive wealth—that it continues to
view it as the pivot of the US-Pakistani relationship.

To underscore the importance of the Pakistani military to Washington’s
geo-political interests and ambitions in Central Asia and the
Middle East, the Bush administration has leaked information in
recent days concerning military-intelligence operations in Pakistan.
According to US government sources, the Pakistani military and
its US military intelligence advisors were about to launch a major
offensive against pro-Taliban elements in the Pashtun-speaking
tribal and Afghan border areas of Pakistan.

Most significant was an article in yesterday’s New
York Times that publicly revealed for the first time that
the CIA is operating a quasi-military base inside Pakistan. According
to the Times report, the CIA recently obtained the Pakistani
president’s go-ahead to mount strikes at suspected Islamic
insurgents within Pakistan: “Among other things, the new
arrangements allowed an increase in the number and scope of patrols
and strikes by armed Predator surveillance aircraft launched from
a secret base in Pakistan—a far more aggressive strategy
to attack Al Qaeda and the Taliban than had existed before.”

Although the Times report made no mention of it, such
a CIA base would likely also be used as a staging area for US
activity against Pakistan’s western neighbor, Iran.

Copyright
1998-2007
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved