Telegraph : Pakistani politics are way beyond baffling

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Pakistani politics are way beyond baffling

By Vicki Woods | October 20, 2007

Anyone who watched Benazir Bhutto's motley caravan inching at less than walking pace through the packed crowds of flag-wavers and flower-petal throwers on Thursday must have been braced for the bang. Still, it's always a sick-making shock when it comes. But it won't stop her political ambitions: she is a brave woman.

Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's former prime minister and would-be returner himself, promptly called Miss Bhutto to commiserate and denounce the bombing, which was very diplomatic of him, since they loathe each other.

Imran Khan, the head of the Pakistan Movement for Justice (PTI), did not commiserate - not in anything I've read, anyway. They loathe each other, too.
advertisement

Last week, he was on Pakistani telly criticising her return, lambasting the "deal with Musharraf" that facilitated it and complaining bitterly that both Washington and Britain's former ambassador, Mark Lyell, had clinched the deal. Thus "giving a military dictator the opportunity to dig in his claws once again". Ooh, temper.

When both Benazir Bhutto and Imran Khan were undergraduates at Oxford in the early 1970s, her papa, Zulfikar Aly Bhutto, was prime minister. Democracy is a delicate plant in Pakistan and the best thing about the bloody violence that followed Bhutto's election in 1977 (he had to declare martial law in Karachi and Lahore) was that the inevitable coup that removed him was bloodless.

When I visited Lahore in 1995 to interview Imran Khan, the country was enjoying - if that's the word - one of its seasonal bouts of raggle-taggle democracy. I really liked it: in the years before September 11, Lahore was a jolly, friendly place to be, even during Ramadan. My driver made a point, every day at noon, of driving me to a Chinese restaurant "because Madam is not obliged to fast". I absolutely preferred brief starvation to chancing my digestion on Chinese food in Lahore, so each day I said I'd wait until he broke his fast. Honour satisfied on both sides.

Benazir Bhutto was in her second go as prime minister in 1995, before being beaten (again) by Nawaz Sharif, who was couped in turn by General Pervez Musharraf. The general's eight years in power have been backed by the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q), which is a party that obviously likes military dictators: having backed General Ayub Khan and then General Zia. Weirdly, Nawaz Sharif's party is also called the Pakistan Muslim League, but its initials on the ballot papers are PML-N: the N stands for Nawaz. Makes you think of "David Cameron's Conservatives" at the Southall election. (Always a very bad idea, Dave.) Pakistani politics are beyond baffling, even without the cyclical generals. I had to spend weeks mugging up for Imran Khan.

I was there to ask him about his cancer hospital, but I was much more interested in his own political ambitions, which were just beginning. He was just launching PTI (and he is - to date - its only sitting MP). He says PTI is committed to "a modern Islamic welfare state". Always a good word, "modern". As is "welfare" (or it used to be). We're not too sure about "Islamic" these days though, are we? It's a bit close to "Islamist", which the Western world (and Martin Amis) generally consider to be Not a Good Thing.

He was preparing for the 1996 elections when I was in Lahore, six weeks or so before he married Jemima Goldsmith. He was very upbeat about victory: I think optimism is a Pakistani national trait. Jemima went as his wife on the election trail, spoke to crowds in her newly learned Urdu and basked in his charismatic celebrity as Pakistan's all-round, best-ever cricketer. On polling day, he was rushing about with high hopes, and eventually came to tell her: "It's a wipe-out." She cried, "How fabulous, Immie!" and he had to explain that a wipeout meant no seats, not all the seats. He will not, I reckon, trouble Benazir, Musharraf or Washington in Pakistan's general elections next year. (If they can hold the elections.)

Musharraf's prime minister at the moment (he'll obviously have to step down for Benazir) is Shaukat Aziz, a banker with a 30-year history in global finance. He was elected as PM after first having a parliamentary seat found for him to win. He was already Musharraf's finance minister (apparently you don't need a parliamentary seat to be a minister in Pakistan. Bit like Lord Adonis, what?).

In its 60 years of life, Pakistan's military rulers have mostly got into bed with the tougher religious leaders; while the democrats have eschewed clerics in favour of secular, Western-oriented chaps who are big in business and technology. Weirdly, America has tended to favour the blokes in uniform over the messy, secular democrats.

When General Musharraf is inaugurated as president a few weeks from now, he will resign from the army. Stripped of his Sam Browne and scrambled egg, he will be the very model of a democratically elected president. Now that can only be a Good Thing, eh? But I imagine he will sorely miss the uniform. Generals like oiled wheels; they like shouting Shun! and being shunted. Once he has formally stepped down, the outcome that America wants can be put in place. Lo - Pakistan will have a democratic government headed by a Mr and Miss (Bhutto). Once she has been elected prime minister, of course.

America thinks she is a shoo-in: I can see why, but Pakistan's delightfully voluble media don't necessarily agree. She's from Sind, after all, they say. She doesn't have any support in the tribal area; and she is not at all acceptable to (meaning "adaptable by") what Pakistani papers call "religious elements", i.e. the more politicised clerics. Still, maybe America is right. There aren't that many voters in the tribal area.

In 1996, I was told Benazir's voters were the rural poor of the Sind, while Nawaz Sharif was the choice of the Punjab's middle classes. These days, there are middle classes in Karachi too.

As today's leading article explains: when Gen Musharraf steps down, his current deputy, Gen Kiyani, will most likely take his place as head of the army. Now, there's a name to watch. Should we get ready to add Kiyani to my list of Pakistani generals who have led bloody coups? Or bloodless couplets?