As Zardari Prepares for the Political Plunge, Benazir States Her Conditions

South Asia Tribune, April 4, 2004
As Zardari Prepares for the Political Plunge, Benazir States Her Conditions
By Shaheen Sehbai

DUBAI, April 6: Days before the Bhutto family takes another political plunge into Pakistan’s murky politics, the mood here in Dubai is adventurous.

Confident and defiant husband Asif Ali Zardari is busy assembling his media teams and packing his bags to return to Pakistan for a daring journey which may again land him behind the bars, should he annoy the Generals a bit too much.

Wife Benazir Bhutto is making faces at the uniformed political negotiators with her own set of tough and politically shrewd pre-conditions for the so called national political reconciliation.

Many PPP jialas, gathered here at the Benazir House, are plotting their strategies to beat the Choudhries of Gujrat and the Punjab Government on the day General Pervez Musharraf lands in New Delhi to watch an Indo-Pak cricket one-dayer. The Bhuttos expect that their Lahore one-day show on April 16 will turn out to be a bigger thriller than Musharraf’s cricket diplomacy.

All strategists agree that if events turn out to be nasty in Lahore, the General will be adequately embarrassed in front of the Indian and the world media.

It another 10 days Zardari will be boarding a flight for Lahore to test General Musharraf’s nerves, and his resolve, to provide the mainstream political parties the space he has vaguely promised as part of the reconciliation charade. Camera crews and newspaper hacks from round the world are trying their best to get on board the Zardari flight as they expect a re-run, although on a yet unknown scale, of Benazir Bhutto’s April 6, 1986 landing in Lahore, exactly19 years ago.

As passing through Dubai I spend a long day with Asif and Benazir sharing their exile, it becomes evident that the environment is charged and cell phones are constantly ringing. Asif is getting minute by minute reports of whatever is going on in Pakistan.

“We just heard that a PIA Boeing 777 rolled back and hit something at Karachi. Somebody from the plane is giving me the details. That may sink PIA Chairman Ahmed Saeed…. My men in Nawabshah have been arrested to stop them from going to Lahore…I just got a “third party” call who told me I will be allowed to hold a public meeting but I cannot stage a rally in Lahore,” he keeps telling me after each call.

And then he adds: “We are going there to hold our show, if they want to arrest me, fine. If they don’t want to arrest me, fine again. If they arrest my men, we are prepared. But our show will go on and thousands of cars will jam Lahore on the D-Day, whether they like it or nor.”

Meeting the hardened politician after 9 years is interesting for me especially in view of our last meeting in July 1996 in Islamabad, which had ended in acrimony. The 9 long years have done some good for both of us. When he came to pick me up from my hotel, we had a huge bear hug on the road, almost as if emotional. We sit down in a mid-Dubai restaurant for a 3 hour lunch which is interrupted many times over by new dishes and new information coming from all over Pakistan. His cell phone is like a newsroom and for a journalist to be getting breaking news every few minutes while enjoying some crispy seafood in a metropolitan tension-free setting is exciting.

Asif looks fit but he has medical problems and will be seeing doctors in the next few days before he flies to a physical ordeal in Lahore. His mind and thinking process is much clearer and sharper. He talks as a mature politician ready to face the odds but also practice the art of the possible and matured he has, as if baked in an oven. He appears flexible ready to take all the chances, walk the talk and test the ropes.

We discuss a lot of strategies that PPP is making, that the Generals may be contemplating and what may or may not work. He says I am ready for jail once again but I am not ready to become a pawn, a “Faisal Saleh Hayat”, meaning he is not falling for the crumbs that may be on offer but wants a proper guaranteed political agreement in which all sides stick to their word, unlike the “guarantees” which duped the political maulanas of MMA.

He clearly hints at some of the “goodies” which have been put on the table but does not discuss details. These goodies are in return for good conduct, joining “them” instead of fighting them.

Benazir Bhutto, in turn, elaborates in detail on what Asif just only hints at. She was preparing to drive to Ras Al-Khaima, about 2 hours from Dubai, for an event commemorating the 26th death anniversary of her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. PPP workers have arranged a big gathering there and I join her in her car to have a long discussion on the current situation and events. We drive for almost 3 hours before we get there and she makes a hard hitting speech on her father’s life and death.

What we discuss in the car is off the record but when she speaks to the cheering crowd, she puts on the table her specific conditions for a dialogue with the Generals, foremost among them is the test of sincerity of the regime by allowing Asif to land in Lahore and have his show.

But the more important conditions is whether the Generals will make the upcoming Local Bodies elections as a sample of “free and fair” General Elections that may follow, either this year, in 2006 or 2007.

On the first condition, she mocks the Generals. “They have said they will not allow Asif to hold a rally. How are thousands of PPP supporters supposed to reach the venue, by parachutes if not through trucks and buses. And when hundreds of vehicles move in the same direction for the same destination, raising the same slogans, what does it become – a rally, by whatever name you may call it.”

But her second demand for free and fair Local Bodies Polls has much deeper meaning. She wants the Generals to show they mean business by allowing all parties to run freely in the Local polls. “There should be no agencies interference. No nomination of Nazims and Mayors. No selection of candidates and winners. No stuffing of ballots. No manipulation. If these elections are fair, we will then believe that the General Elections could be better than 2002. If they don’t let us elect our Mayors, how will they let us elect our MNAs, Chief Ministers and Prime Minister. They have to establish their credibility.”

She explains later that in the last Local Bodies polls, PPP had won 28 out of 36 Districts in Punjab but one by one the Establishment plucked them away from PPP, some under duress, others with carrots and yet others with both.

Both Asif and Benazir acknowledge that the political allies of Musharraf, the Choudhries of Punjab, will not allow free and fair polls, neither for Local Bodies not the Parliament. In Punjab the king’s party will be decimated by a combined PPP-PML-N juggernaut. “The Choudhries are driving the Generals into a blind alley as they have no future if reconciliation takes place and the Generals have no future if it does not.”

Benazir and Asif work as a team realizing that most of the political moves by the Generals are ill-intentioned: Aimed at splitting up the political couple to break up the PPP strength.

As an added precaution, they do not even travel together unless absolutely necessary. They did go to Ajmer in India but it was thanksgiving and prayers for the future.

Yet Asif is now poised for a much more intensive political role inside Pakistan as he prepares to practically run a party which has been feeling the pinch of its leader in exile and with no second string leader who could take the entire party along on a national basis, though many bright stars claim their positions at various tiers.

Asif’s new role is to get them all together, organize the party and lead the struggle for democracy, but more importantly, his task is to prepare the ground for the safe and quick return of Benazir Bhutto as Musharraf gets closer to the declared time frame of quitting his uniform.

All realize that Musharraf does not have enough time. He is under pressure from the West to distance himself from the Mullas, ensure that liberal and mainstream parties are allowed their political space and hold free and fair General elections in 2007, if not early.

But Musharraf is worried about his own tenure after 2007 and all political bargaining positions begin and end at that focused outcome. Musharraf wants a deal from Benazir and Asif to stay on even after 2007 but they want their political price, if and when they allow him.

The negotiations and issues are complex and the dialogue is difficult but what is more striking is the lack of will to actually do some “give and take” which essentially is the heart and soul of every negotiation.

“The Generals think that reconciliation means that we should accept everything they say, without question,” Benazir said in one moment of deep thought. “That is not going to happen.”