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Pakistanis overwhelmingly reject US-backed strongman Musharraf
By K. Ratnayake and Keith Jones
20 February 2008

The Pakistani people overwhelmingly repudiated the US-backed,
military-controlled regime of Pervez Musharraf in national and
provincial elections held Monday.

According to news reports, parties opposed to Musharraf will
hold a substantial majority in the National Assembly and should
be in a position to form governments excluding the Musharraf-allied
parties in at least three of Pakistan’s four provinces.

While the final composition of the National Assembly has yet
to be determined (voting in some constituencies was postponed
and the allotment of 70 seats reserved for women and “religious
minorities” will only be made when the popular vote is completely
tallied), the opposition parties appear close to obtaining the
two-third’s majority that they would need to impeach Musharraf
or amend the constitution to radically curtail the president’s
powers.

The Pakistan Muslim League (Q), the party created by the military-intelligence
apparatus to provide a popular fig-leaf for Musharraf’s dictatorship,
was routed. It finished in third place in the National Assembly
election, far behind Pakistan’s traditional establishment
parties, the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim
League (Nawaz). The PML (Q) also lost badly in the provincial
assembly election in the Punjab, the province it claims as its
base and which is home to the majority of Pakistanis.

Virtually the entire PML (Q) leadership suffered personal electoral
defeat, including PML (Q) President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and
most cabinet ministers. A chastened Hussain declared, “We
accept the results with an open heart,” and “will sit
on the opposition benches.”

The election results constitute a major blow to the Bush administration,
which has defended Musharraf through thick and thin, including
his imposition of martial law for six weeks beginning last November
3, his purge of supreme and superior court judges deemed insufficiently
pliant, and his patently unconstitutional, stage-managed “re-election”
to a further five-year term as president last October.

During the past seven years, Bush has repeatedly hailed Musharraf
as a pivotal ally in the “war on terror,” justified
his autocratic actions as steps toward democracy, and expressed
his personal admiration and even affection for the Pakistani dictator.

Under Musharraf, Pakistan has played a vital role in the US
invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and provided the US military-intelligence
apparatus with offshore torture sites as well as training grounds
and staging areas for US war preparations against Iran.

Even the US press has been forced to concede that a key element
in the popular hostility to Musharraf is his close and subservient
relationship with Washington. The United States is reviled for
having supported a succession of military dictatorships in Pakistan,
for its Afghan and Iraq wars, and for the pressure it has placed
on the Musharraf regime to ruthlessly suppress the Taliban in
Pakistan’s Pashtun-speaking tribal and border areas.

At Washington’s urging, the Pakistani military has targeted
the civilian population in insurgent areas, sought to exert central
government control over tribal areas which since the creation
of Pakistan have enjoyed broad autonomy, and arbitrarily “disappeared”
Islamic terrorist suspects.

In the weeks prior to the elections, a parade of top US intelligence
and Pentagon officials traveled to Islamabad to press Musharraf
and the Pakistani military to allow the US military-intelligence
apparatus to play an even larger role in Pakistan’s anti-Taliban
counter-insurgency war.

Washington clings to Musharraf

In the wake of Monday’s elections, the Bush administration
appears intent on clinging to Musharraf.

“We certainly would hope that whoever becomes prime minister,
and whoever winds up in charge of the new government, would be
able to work with him [Musharraf] and to work with all other factions,”
declared US State Department spokesman Tom Casey early Tuesday
morning.

Speaking later in the day, the State Department’s Sean
McCormack stressed that the full, official election results were
not known and reiterated the administration’s continuing
support for Musharraf: “We are going to continue our work
with President Musharraf and whatever that new government may
be on goals of our interest.”

The Bush administration position was seconded by the three
US senators who traveled to Pakistan to monitor Monday’s
elections—Joseph Biden, the Democratic chairman of the Senate
foreign relations committee, John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential
candidate, and Chuck Hagel, a Republican.

At a press conference in Islamabad Tuesday they said that in
post-election discussions with Nawaz Sharif and PPP leader Asif
Ali Zardari they had “urged them not to dwell on the past
but to look towards the future, in the interests of the country.”

Said Kerry, “We urge the leaders of the various political
parties to put the grudges of the past in the past.” In other
words, the opposition parties should not challenge Musharraf’s
presidential mandate—no matter that it was secured through
a sham election, the imposition of martial law and a judicial
purge.

The results are all the more devastating in that the Musharraf
regime went to extraordinary lengths to manipulate and rig the
elections.

Musharraf used last year’s emergency to impose permanent
and draconian restrictions on the press and harass and jail thousands
of oppositionists, some of whom remained in jail or under house
arrest through Monday’s vote. Journalists were threatened
and harassed so as not to report on opposition campaigns. Many
of those who went to the polls Monday were not allowed to vote
because their names did not appear on the voter lists compiled
by the pro-government Election Commission.

Neither of the principal opposition leaders were able to contest
the elections.

Nawaz Sharif—whom Musharraf deposed in his 1999 military
coup, sent into exile after arranging for his conviction on treason
charges, and expelled from the country again when he first attempted
to return to Pakistan last September—was barred from standing
for election on the grounds he is a convicted criminal.

PPP leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on December 27,
less than two weeks before the original election date, and just
hours before she was to hand over to US lawmakers evidence that
Musharraf’s allies were planning to rig the vote.

Pro-Musharraf parties routed

According to GEO Television and Dawn reports, the PML
(Q) has won just 38 of the 258 National Assembly seats where the
results have been tallied, as compared to 87 for the PPP and 66
for Sharif’s PML (N).

In the Punjab, where the PML (Q) previously formed the provincial
government, it has won just 66 of the 285 declared seats. Its
best result was in Baluchistan, which, while resource-rich and
geographically large, is far and away the smallest of Pakistan’s
four provinces.

The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, or MMA—a
coalition of Islamic parties—also suffered devastating losses.
While it held some fifty seats in the outgoing National Assembly,
it has won just two in the current election, and in the North-West
Frontier Province, where it formed the government for the last
five years, it has captured just 9 of the 91 seats where results
have been tallied.

The MMA postured as an opponent of the Musharraf regime, but
clearly benefited from the military regime’s support in the
staged-managed elections held in 2002. The MMA returned the favor,
serving as the governmental coalition partner of the PML (Q) in
Baluchistan for the next five years and, more importantly, providing
Musharraf with the votes he needed in the National Assembly to
pass changes to the constitution that greatly increased the powers
of the presidency and created a military-dominated National Security
Council with authority over keys aspects of government policy.

The MQM, an ally of Musharraf based in the mohajir community—that
is, those who immigrated to Pakistan from north India when the
subcontinent was communally portioned in 1947—did somewhat
better. It captured 19 National Assembly seats, most of them in
the environs of Karachi, the Sind province’s and Pakistan’s
largest city.

But the PPP, which has strong roots in Sind—the Bhuttos
are one of the province’s leading landlord families—has
reportedly won an outright majority of the seats in the Sind Assembly.

The PPP made Benazir Bhutto’s purported “martyrdom
for democracy” virtually the exclusive focus of its campaign.

In 2007, the Bush administration, in an attempt to shore up
an increasingly beleaguered Musharraf, sought to broker a power-sharing
deal between Benazir Bhutto and her PPP and Musharraf, the military
and Musharraf’s PML (Q).

Bhutto was more than willing to accept the patronage of Washington
and to make a deal with Musharraf. To prove her bonafides to the
Bush administration, she repeatedly criticized Musharraf for not
doing enough to root out Islamacist extremism in Pakistan. But
a deal could never be cemented because of opposition from Musharraf’s
camp and because the political dynamics shifted as popular opposition
to the military regime swelled.

Nevertheless, with an eye to winning Washington’s favor,
the PPP has never excluded working with Musharraf.

Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, who in feudal-dynastic
fashion laid claim to the leadership of the PPP within days of
his wife assassination, has proclaimed that his party, as the
largest in the incoming National Assembly, should have the right
to form the government. He said he will strive for a coalition
of all forces not involved in the previous PML (Q)-led government.

More surprising than the strong showing of the PPP—a party
that despite its reactionary record in office continues to have
support among sections of Pakistan’s toilers because of the
populist reforms with which it was associated in the 1970s—was
the seat tally for Sharif’s PML (N). In addition to winning
more than a quarter of the seats thus far decided in the National
Assembly elections, it has emerged as the largest party in the
Punjab Assembly.

The PML (N) has traditionally had close ties to the military
and to the Islamic right. Nawaz Sharif, who hails from a family
of industrialists, began his political career as a protégé
of the dictator General Zia. But because of his enmity for Musharraf
and connections to the Islamic fundamentalists, Sharif has been
seen by the Bush administration as an obstacle.

During the election campaign, Sharif was far more critical
of the US than the PPP leadership. He also posed as a more implacable
opponent of Musharraf by making the reinstatement of the judges
Musharraf purged the focus of the PML (N) campaign.

The fifth largest party in the incoming National Assembly and
the largest party in the North-West Frontier Province assembly
will be the Pashtun-based Awami Nationalist Party. It appealed
to opposition to Musharraf, Islamic fundamentalism and the growing
US military presence in the province.

Opposition to Musharraf and the entire political set-up was
also expressed in the massive abstention rate. It is estimated
that no more than 40 percent of the electorate participated in
the elections.

While some voters may have stayed away because of the threat
of terrorist attacks, the capitalist press conceded that many
poor Pakistanis failed to vote because they saw little to choose
between the parties, all of which when in office have defended
the interests of the capitalists and landlords and imposed socially
incendiary neo-liberal reforms.

Some smaller parties, including several that describe themselves
as leftist or socialist, were calling for an election boycott
to oppose the unconstitutional and anti-democratic Musharraf regime.

Monday’s election sets the stage for a struggle between
the PPP, PML (N), other smaller parties, Musharraf and the military
over the division of power and patronage.

The military itself is divided over the wisdom of continuing
to back Musharraf, whose unpopularity is seen as jeopardizing
the extensive economic interests the officer corps have developed,
as well as the stability and territorial integrity of the Pakistani
state. In recent weeks several hundred prominent retired senior
officers have publicly come out in favor of Musharraf’s resignation,
some even taking the unprecedented step of joining anti-Musharraf
protests.

Washington’s statements of support for Musharraf are meant
as a message to the military, with which the Pentagon has a more
than 50-year-old relationship, that the US is intent on guaranteeing
its interests in the political realignment now underway.

Bush and US Vice President Cheney, from all reports, feel a
genuine affinity for the dictator Musharraf. But ultimately, for
US imperialism the real issue is not the personal fate of Musharraf,
but ensuring that the military remains the decisive power in Pakistan.

The PPP and PML (N), for their part, will engage in all manner
of backroom deals with the military and Washington. The PPP has
twice before come to the rescue of the Pakistani bourgeoisie by
assuming power when military dictatorships have unraveled. And
it has always ensured that the military-security apparatus and
Pakistan’s subservient alliance with Washington have remained
intact.

The new government will assume office under conditions of a
growing economic crisis, which has exploded in recent weeks in
the form of food and power shortages, after years of capitalist
economic growth that benefited only a small privileged minority.

That the PPP or PML (N) made little reference to this crisis
in their election campaigns is no accident. They subscribe to
essentially the same polices.

Even the News, a Pakistani daily, was forced to take
note in an election day editorial of the failure of the opposition
parties to address the burning social problems facing the Pakistani
people: “There is a notable absence in the wordy rhetoric
and empty promises of all the main political parties as polling
day draws nigh: Nobody, but nobody, is talking about land reform.
None of the major political parties appears to have a commitment
to the single most fundamental change that could begin to alleviate
the national disaster of poverty—land reform.”

Democracy in Pakistan will not be secured through a sordid
deal negotiated behind the backs of the Pakistani people between
Washington, the military, and the parties of the bourgeois elite,
but only by the working class placing itself at the head of the
toiling masses and linking the struggle for democratic rights
with a challenge to Pakistan’s reactionary socio-economic
order.

Genuine democracy requires the liquidation of landlordism,
the dismantling of the US sponsored military-security state, the
separation of mosque from state, socialist measures to provide
jobs and a secure income for all, and the overthrow of the communal
state system that imperialism imposed on South Asia, with the
connivance of the Indian National Congress and Muslim League,
in 1947-48. It will be realized only in the form of a workers’
and peasants’ government that consciously links the fate
of the toilers of Pakistan and South Asia to the international
working class’ struggle to put an end to capitalism.

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