During its brief history Pakistan has been used as a stage for many a
charade, sometimes in the name of religion, sometimes in the name of
democracy but always in national interest and for the people! The
latest farce is a deal between Gen Pervez Musharraf and Benazir
Bhutto. As usual on such occasions the people do not know whether to
laugh or curse their stars.

Quite a few people believe that on the fourth of October, in the year
2007, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s party was stabbed in the back by none
other than his daughter and that the injury may prove fatal. Did the
40-year-old party that had begun by holding up the promise of
people’s empowerment deserve to spend its adult years as the bonded
maid of a praetorian consul?

While the country was going through a convulsion on whose outcome
depended the future of its young ones, the PPP had three concerns on
the top of its agenda: the people’s right to democracy, the party’s
prospects in the coming general election, and the possibility of its
chairperson’ s rehabilitation in active politics — in that order.

The chairperson seems to have chosen to read the priorities upside
down. As she bargained for reprieve for herself, she rendered the
party more vulnerable than before and the prospect for democratic
revival bleaker.

Many in the party had hoped that the chairperson would give the
organisation a new lease of life and democracy a chance by stepping
out of the power race and letting the Young Turks lead what is left
of the great party. Frustrated, they do not know how to defend an
indefensible deal.

There were also many, inside the party and outside, who had, at the
very first reports of the deal, warned of a kiss of death. During the
weeks that the deal took to materialise this warning was justified
many times over.

Those who have persuaded themselves to believe that the deal will
benefit Pakistan or the PPP may be in for early shocks. The ordinance
that is being hailed for reconciliation between Gen Musharraf and
Benazir Bhutto is most likely to further alienate the people from
both. Besides, the General’s team will ensure that his promises to
BB — removal of bar to a third bid for premiership, etc. — are put on
hold till after the electoral contest, which the PPP will enter with
a thin force of bedraggled soldiers. If it does not do well enough at
the polls, the General is likely to renege on his pledges to BB as
comfortably as he had abandoned MMA after the pact leading to the
17^th amendment. The party faithful will then be left to ponder what
Ghalib had said over a century ago:

Kia woh Namrud ki khudai thi/Bandagi mein mera bhala na huwa.

Benazir Bhutto was right when she identified quasi-religious
militancy as the most serious threat to Pakistan and argued that the
country could be saved only by the people, backed by civilian
democratic government. But the regime with which she has pawned her
soul is capable neither of preventing Pakistan’s Talibanisation nor
of establishing a popular democracy. The threat to the state has
increased.

The other party to the deal is unlikely to fare any better than the
PPP. The General’s victory is as pyrrhic as pyrrhic can be. He will
not be as strong and as free a ruler as he has so far been. Attempts
to run the country as before will make the going much tougher.

At the same time the events of the past few weeks will give rise to
new political forces and the next round between democrats and
autocrats may take place sooner than expected and may not end the way
the last one has.

However, the fate of the deal-makers will matter to the people less
than their own ordeal. The people’s disappointments over the past few
weeks will severely affect their activism that the lawyers’ agitation
had engendered. Between March 9 and September 29

Pakistan politics went through a cycle that has certain basic lessons
for the hardy democrats.

The lawyers’ courage out in the open helped them win people’s support
and by July 20 the regime seemed to have been routed. But then the
streets were emptied of the democrats and the gendarmes moved in.
They had a dry run on September 10 when Nawaz Sharif was cheated out
of his birthright, contrary to everything contained in the
Constitution, laws and rules of decency, and the people watched
passively while their half-baked leaders sulked under detention.

Assured that the people were not returning to the streets, the regime
showed its hideous face on September 29, one of the blackest days in
the history of Pakistani people. The opposition fell back on the
rhetoric of its leaders and a strategy of blocking General
Musharraf’s election by resigning from legislatures. This manœuvre
was a non-starter to begin with and the delay in carrying it out made
its defeat certain.

In the process the experts found the Constitution silent on the
effect on the presidential election if a provincial assembly stood
dissolved. The Indians had been alive to this eventuality and
therefore they made it clear in the constitution that the dissolution
of a state (provincial) assembly would not affect the election of the
president. But this provision offers little help to Sher Afgan.

A state in India represents only 1/17^th of the provincial part of the
electoral college whereas a province in Pakistan represents 1/4^th of
the provincial component of the electoral college.

All this constitutional and legal quibble apart, the essential fact
is that the battle for the people’s right to self-rule will be won
neither in courts nor in assemblies of doubtful origins; this battle
will be won by people’s mobilisation alone.

The democrats are on the verge of another defeat because they have
been looking for short-cuts to democracy where none are available.

It’s time to return to the basics of mass mobilisation through
serious political work.