It is seldom that an election in a third world country is awaited with such keen interest all over the world as the Pakistani election scheduled to be held on February 18.
During the run-up to its original date in January this interest was accompanied by much hope at home and abroad that the groundswell of support for the late Benazir Bhutto promised a robust return to parliamentary democracy and, more importantly, to a new era of civil-military relations built around a power-sharing arrangement with General (retd.) Pervez Musharraf. In reality, this was by no means an assured outcome but by all accounts Bhutto was prepared to explore the option.
An indefatigable campaigner, she was also widening the parameters of political discourse by systematically bringing up issues that Pakistan needs to address. The first priority was the restoration of democracy.
But she was straining hard to go beyond mere constitutionalism by promising an instrumental use of democracy to develop a different and peaceful approach to terrorism, problems of provincial autonomy in a federal state and a more equitable economic order.
By injecting material issues into her campaign she had forced other parties to do the same. It was in deference to her decision to participate in the elections despite numerous misgivings about a fair and free election that Nawaz Sharif, the other former prime minister who too had returned from a long exile, ended his boycott of polls and got his faction of the Muslim League to issue an exhaustive issue-based programme of reforms. Between them the electoral process was beginning to look authentic and meaningful.
There was no lack of reminders that Pakistan needed this shift to constructive politics. The armed forces were battling hard to blunt what looked like a concerted offensive by militant groups.
The claims regimes claims that it had broken the back of these groups and the Al Qaida became untenable as tribal insurgents attacked old forts dating back to the British era and sent suicide bombers into cities. The optimistic picture about the economy faded away as the country was hit by crippling power shortages.
Sharif charged Musharraf with not having added even one megawatt of power to what he and Bhutto had left behind eight years ago. Discontent deepened as the staple food - the wheat flour - became expensive and scarce. It was beginning to become an electoral audit of an incumbent government.
Unprecedented
This was before assassins cut Bhutto down on December 27. Apart from an unprecedented outpouring of grief, her death plunged this electoral process into uncertainty. Her own party wanted to go ahead with the polls on January 8 but pro-Musharraf politicians secretly sought postponement as they felt that a sympathy vote for Bhutto's party would work to their disadvantage.
The government obliged them by deferring the election but full four weeks after Bhutto's death the election campaign remains without the verve and vitality seen in that fateful December.
An obvious reason for this lack of political energy is the pervasive fear of terrorist attacks on meetings and processions. But this is not the only reason. Bhutto's death has brought the focus back sharply to Musharraf with revived allegations that his promises of holding fair and free elections and honouring the peoples' verdict are not credible.
Musharraf is never short of surprises. In the midst of a volatile domestic situation he suddenly embarked upon an extended tour of some European capitals. He said he had come to Europe to remove misperceptions about Pakistan but the basic template he used caused much dismay in his own country.
He told Western audiences that it would be quite some time before the people of Pakistan were ready for democracy as understood in the West. Irritated by references to democracy he chastised them for their obsession with democracy and human rights.
The prevalent interpretation in Pakistan was that he was alerting Western governments which need him desperately for Afghanistan that he would not hesitate to take arbitrary measures if the forthcoming election undermined his power. This perception has dampened hopes that the election will resolve Pakistan's political crisis; it has also made many political parties to revert forcefully to the demand that he steps down.
Two recent polls - one conducted by American pollsters linked to the Republican Party and the other by an established Pakistani operator in the field -have revealed that 67 per cent of Pakistanis are dissatisfied with Musharraf and want a change. His best option seems to be to hold fair and free elections, persuade the winners to create a coalition of national unity and salvation, transfer real power to it and try to continue as a constitutional head of state.
All available evidence, however, indicates that he wants to set up a troika comprising a powerful president, an unassertive and docile prime minister and the new army chief who presumably would exert political influence through the National Security Council. The new army chief has not shown any inclination of playing power games and the major parties - Bhutto's Peoples Party and Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League - will not be content with the shadow of power.
Post-election strife
In this situation, Pakistan may face post-election strife particularly if the state apparatus is seen to have rigged the election in favour of pro-Musharraf political parties and secondly, if the major parties react to Musharraf's power beyond the Constitution by withholding legitimisation of the several extra-constitutional steps he took on November 3, 2007 to get another presidential term.
In Brussles, Paris and London and in a meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Davos, Musharraf reaffirmed his intention of honouring the results of a free and fair election. Unfortunately, these assurances do not carry much conviction within the country and lurking just below the ostensible apathy of a people stunned by Benazir Bhutto's murder is a seething mass of indignation waiting to burst out like a volcano.
Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former ambassador and foreign secretary of Pakistan.
