October Election Results Continue Pakistan's Political Instability

By M. M Ali

Pakistan has had three elections, six prime ministers and four army commanders-in-chief in the past five years. If blame for the political instability can be placed on any one individual, it would be the late Gen. Mohammed Zia ul Haq. Having usurped the reins of government through a military coup in 1979, Zia jailed his hard-line socialist patron, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and two years later sent him to the gallows.

Bhutto was convicted on a not-too-convincing charge of ordering the murder of a member of a rival party and sentenced by a divided court. Clearly Zia feared Bhutto alive, even in jail or in exile. Zia then held power for the next 11 years, with the help of his military commanders and the civil service cadre, until he was killed in a still-unexplained 1990 air crash.

Zia undertook measures during the 1980s that throttled the infant democracy struggling to emerge after Pakistan's difficult birth. Political parties were banned, the press was gagged, politicians were barred from public life, political activity was prohibited on campuses, the Constitution was suspended and the country was governed by ordinances issued from the office of President Zia, who also was the commander-in-chief.

Then, when Zia revived the Constitution, he added the now infamous Eighth Amendment in 1985 that gave him full authority to dismiss even an elected prime minister at will. He exercised this authority to dismiss summarily his prime minister, Mohammed Khan Junejo.

Zia's successor, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, followed suit to remove Benazir Bhutto, daughter of the executed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, from the prime ministership in 1990. This year he removed her political rival and elected successor, Nawaz Sharif, from the office of prime minister.

This time, however, Pakistan's Supreme Court vacated Ishaq Khan's order. Eventually General Abdul Waheed, the army chief, forced both Nawaz Sharif and Ishaq Khan to step down. Moin Qureshi, a former World Bank executive, was appointed interim prime minister and new elections were held in October.

Moin Qureshi, who initially indicated lack of interest in the office of the prime minister, even on an interim basis, surprisingly embarked on a path of radical economic and political reform. Although his only authority was the temporary powers given him by the army, he perhaps sensed that the public was tired of the antics of the politicians. He set out to curb the vested interests and expose the corrupt elements.

No Ordinary Interim

Cheered on by former colleagues from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, he devalued the Pakistani rupee by 9.13 percent—something that the IMF had been recommending in recent years—and moved against narcotics trafficking, drug addiction and tax evasion. He published the names of major defaulters on bank loans that amounted to 80 billion rupees ($2.6 billion). The list of hundreds of defaulters looked like a Who's Who of political leaders from both major political parties. Politicians found guilty of non-repayment of government loans were barred from standing for election.

He also levied taxes on agricultural land holdings, something that previous governments had feared to do, because of the near-feudal powers of the landlord class. The central bank of the country was given an autonomous status so that it could manage the monetary policy free of political pressures. He also raised government subsidized prices on such consumer items as wheat, edible oil, petroleum and electricity.

These measures could not be completed within the allotted 90-day time frame of his prime ministry. It is debatable whether he helped his successor by taking necessary actions that would be political suicide for any elected prime minister, or merely set unattainable standards that no prime minister can hope to continue, given political realities in Pakistan.

Shadows of two dead men, Zia ul Haq and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and two others in exile, Altaf Husain in London and Murtuza Bhutto (Benazir's brother) in Syria loomed over the Oct. 6 elections. Zia's one-time protege, Nawaz Sharif, ran on the Muslim League ticket, Altaf's Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) controlled Karachi and Hyderabad constituencies, and Murtuza Bhutto created considerable problems for his sister Benazir's People's Party, although in the end he failed to win election himself. Since no one had expected any single party to capture a clear majority in the National Assembly, there were no surprises, as Qureshi had predicted.

Strictly speaking, there are only two national political parties that have organizations and platforms. They are Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, which won 86 seats, and Nawaz Sharifs rightwing Pakistan Muslim League, which won 72 seats in the 217-member National Assembly. All others are mere splinter groups that at best have local standing. Outside of the Muslim League and the People's Party, the largest group that has emerged is that of the Independents. The last-minute decision of the Mohajir Qaumi Movement to boycott national elections in its urban strongholds further increased the importance of the fragments in the competition between Bhutto and Sharif to assemble enough of them to form a government.

No Islamic Front

A significant change in this election was the decision of the Islamic groups to run as separate entities instead of forming a joint front, as in the past, in an alliance with Sharif s PML. This, apparently, helped the PPP, which has always run on a comparatively secular platform.

Once again, however, the seeds sown by Zia ul Haq are creating problems. The absence of political parties for over a decade has enabled individuals and groups with no known national policy or clear ideology to be elected only on the basis of local popularity. The October 1993 election results, therefore, are as indecisive as were the previous ones. The people of Pakistan, instead, are faced with just another round in the sterile rivalry between Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, neither of whom has escaped the taint of corruption by special interests. Horse-trading is on again, uncertainties abound and, at our writing, there is talk of a national government. Moin Qureshi might do well to stick around.