The impending Benazir-Mushrraf Deal

A question: Why are Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto urgently trying to strike a deal?

From Musharraf’s standpoint it is quite comprehensible – it is all about kursi, kursi and kursi.

The Chief Justice crisis has demolished his image of invincibility, the Army is getting openly reviled at protest rallies held in streets of Punjab, and Washington has ended its post-9/11 love affair with him. With his grip on power eroding, the plan of getting ‘re-elected’ through once more gerrymandering the constitution has become fraught with political insecurity and is no longer an easy option.

Consequently, a suitable deal with Benazir Bhutto (and her PPP) is perhaps the safest way to extend his stay in power and enable him to face elections.

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Benazir has been increasingly desperate for a deal ever since she was convicted in a Swiss Court of Law for money laundering. Having appealed the decision she now faces the possibility of even a harsher future - a maximum sentence of five years in jail.

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The evidence against Benazir Bhutto and her spouse was strong enough to convict her in July 2003 of money laundering (the charge of corruption was not included as the funds had been placed in Geneva banks prior to the recent enactment of Swiss anti-corruption legislation) by Swiss Magistrate, Daniel Devaud.

Benazir Bhutto appealed the case. Unfortunately for her now there is an additional charge of aggravated money laundering which carries a maximum sentence of five years in jail as well as a fine of about one million Swiss francs if Bhutto is found guilty.

The evidence stacked against her appears to be fairly conclusive. In September 2005 she was grilled by the Swiss judge for over eight hours. Apparently an emotional Benazir replied to these questions by denying any knowledge of the bank accounts or the millions of dollars worth of ‘commission’ payments made into them.

And when presented with the evidence of the court-sequestered £120,000 diamond necklace discovered in their bank lockers, she admitted that her husband had bought it for her but claimed that as she had refused to accept it she could not be held responsible.

Even after having adopted the legal stance of dumping all the guilt on her spouse, Benazir is still not certain whether the Swiss Court will acquit her.

In the circumstances, it is not surprising to learn that Asif Zaradari has been living in New York for the past few years. As the US and Switzerland do not have an extradition treaty, it will not be possible for the Swiss Courts to lay their hands on him if he is found guilty in the criminal case arraigned against him.


In the event Benazir Bhutto is found guilty of the crime of aggravated money laundering in Switzerland her political future would suffer a tremendous blow. In fact it will be finished if she has to serve time in jail. For once she will not be able to claim political bias, as no one would believe that a Swiss Court would hold a political grudge against her.

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For readers who still believe the accusations of corruption against Benazir Bhutto are mere fantasy, then your Blogger suggests that a brief bout of ‘Googling’ might change their perspective.

For those too lazy to Google just simply click the following links:

The New York Times
The Sunday Times
The Guardian

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So, one can only conclude that any deal entered between Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto will be based on purely selfish motivations on the part of both of them. One hopes to retain his precious kursi and the other hopes to finally get a ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card.

However, whether a deal does materialise, is still a moot point.

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Accepting Musharraf in uniform or allowing him to get re-elected through the existing assemblies, will damage Benazir’s political standing fatally; even the most loyal of her supporters will face difficulty in rising to her defence.

If she colludes with Musharraf and enters into political alliance for the impending elections, she cannot help but become seriously tarnished in the process. She might have got away with it if Musharraf had still been a powerful dictator (which is clearly no longer the case). Now she will be perceived as providing political sustenance to a drowning despot – an unforgivable sin as far as most democratically-minded people are concerned.

However, at the same time the self-centred pressures of getting rid of all corruption cases arrayed against her and the lure of return to Pakistan as a 'homecoming Queen' cannot be discounted nor undervalued.

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From Musharraf’s standpoint losing his uniform is risking political suicide – without the 600,000 men in tanks, helicopter gunships and F-16s propping him, he may soon turn into a political nonentity and sent to political oblivion.

Even if he scrapes a deal with the PPP whereby he discards his uniform for a guaranteed five year term as president, his future remains fraught with risk. While he may possess the requisite constitutional sanction to dismiss future prime ministers and governments, recent events have shown him to be an exceedingly unpopular leader. This obvious lack of public support will weaken him in any potential conflict with the government of the day.

It must be borne in mind that the sight of a weakened Musharraf has changed the attitude in the Bush White House as well. Now beginning to plan for a post-Musharraf Pakistan, the White House has determined that a PPP-Army alliance is the best possible alternative for the US, given the current circumstances.

However, American demands to make a deal with Benazir must be galling for a military dictator used to getting his own way - his recent outbursts against the US are therefore quite comprehensible.

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If a deal does come through - and the signs are there that it will - one can ask: How long will it last?

Considering, there is hardly any love lost between Musharraf and Benazir, if anything their state of mutual loathing has been quite overt, and that military dictators have always held a low threshold for even their own-appointed prime ministers (just take the examples of Zia and Junejo, and Musharraf and Jamali), it will be a deal built on quicksand and probably last no more than a few days after the elections.

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As far the rest of Pakistani politics is concerned, this is what a commentator in Dawn said yesterday:

The Pakistan People’s Party would be a big loser in the event of a deal with the government, according to political analysts based in the capital.

Conversations with sources close to the leadership in different parties revealed that a good number of PPP hawks were seeking membership of other parties, especially the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, after resigning themselves to an arrangement between their party and the government.

The reports of a PPP-government reconciliation have, paradoxically enough, brought joy to other opposition parties as they feel that the last impediment to an anti-Musharraf alliance — People’s Party chief Benazir Bhutto — will now be out of the way.

This was how a leader of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal saw the shape of things to come: “It will enable anti-Musharraf forces to gather on one platform, ensuring a head-on collision between the pro-US ‘enlightened moderates’ on one side, and ‘pro-Islam’ forces on the other.”

The Musharraf-Benazir deal will definitely be a setback for those elements which had set their sights on the forthcoming elections as a vehicle of change.

For hangers-on of the Musharraf government, for instance the PML-Q, the patch-up would be like a bolt from the blue. However, several observers warned of an upheaval if the new arrangement fails to come up to the expectations of the nation.

Pakistan
Musharraf
Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto’s ‘Wisdom’ on Iraq

I recall one of Benazir Bhutto remarks, when she said something along the lines of: ‘I have sadly learnt to sacrifice political morality in favour of political pragmatism’.

Many would question her claim to having practiced any political morality after her 1988 election, but that is not the issue here.

So here is a humble message for her!

Okay BB,

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(Side issue here: I recently read a news report that PPP seniors are now insisting that Benazir be referred to as ‘Mohatarma’ and not ‘BB/bibi’ as ‘Bibi was a term used for low class women’.

What a bunch of ignoramuses and what a load of ineffable codswallop!

‘Mohatarma’, is an Urdu term of extreme courtesy (which to my ears renders a woman positively geriatric). On the other hand ‘Bibi’ (or Lady) is a Persian word redolent of gentility.

Anyhow, not being any party’s appartchik, I reserve my God-given - and democratic - right to call Benazir Bhutto (or for that matter Bush, Bliar, Mush, Nawazu et al) exactly what I want.
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So okay, BiBi!

There is such a thing as pragmatism and there is such a thing as sheer opportunism. Your recent performance on BBC’s Question Time was an illustration of opportunism run amok.

While I realise that you are absolutely convinced that your third chance at power depends on the Bush White House but even blatant obsequiousness has to have limits.

Can I remind you what you said on television on 23 March 2007?

Here is a gist of your pronouncements:

- The world is now a safer place for some, including the people of Iran, because of Saddam’s removal from power.

- Once the Iraqis are able to institutionalise democracy, the invasion and occupation will ultimately be called a success.

- There was a broad-based consensus behind the invasion of Afghanistan, whereas with Iraq, on the basis of faulty US intelligence, there was the perception of an imminent threat.

- Bush’s ‘surge’ (i.e. his plan to increase US troops) has a chance to wipe out the insurgents, the terrorists and the militants.

- If Iraqi democracy succeeds, then Bush and Tony Blair will be regarded as the champions of freedom, and democracy will spread to the rest of the Middle East.

It was just not me who was flabbergasted; this is what a Dawn editorial said about your performance:

…she might as well have added, pigs will fly. Although her utterances occasionally suggest otherwise, Benazir Bhutto isn’t a blithering idiot. The trouble is that, for all her invocations of democracy, for the past 20 years she has clung on to the belief that the road to Islamabad passes through Washington. The idea of speaking truth to power probably never even crosses her mind, and one can only assume she is unembarrassed by the fact that when it comes to Iraq, a military ruler such as Pervez Musharraf, despite being beholden to the US in a variety of ways, manages to sound much less obsequious.

Bhutto appears to have learned nothing during her years in Dubai, else she would have realised by now that the sine qua non of a political future, as far as she is concerned, is not the goodwill of the White House but the intellectual capacity to acknowledge and apologise for her abysmal record in office.

Pakistan

Benazir Bhutto

Finally at Loggerheads?

After two months of public utterings from his minions, the man has finally spoken for himself. Musharraf has at long last officially confirmed what had already become common knowledge.

As the Daily Times reported this Tuesday (20th February, 2007)

President General Pervez Musharraf finally told a TV channel yesterday that he would seek re-election by the current assemblies and not by the new assemblies after the 2007 general elections.

One can surmise that the talks between Musharraf’s intelligence agents and Benazir Bhutto have reached a stalemate.

Browbeating her with the Swiss money laundering case, Musharraf evidently believed that he would eventually get his way. Sadly Benazir would have quite likely conceded on the General’s ‘Uniform Issue’ but the idea of a surrogate prime minister from the PPP proved a bridge too far – the idea is an obvious anathema to her.

Military rulers traditionally exploit the weaknesses of the political forces and attempt to divide and fragment them. Not surprisingly therefore one of the conditions believed to have been imposed on Benazir for the continuance of these secret parleys was that she would abstain from participating in any opposition roundtable meeting.

Consequently it does not come as a surprise that for weeks Benazir had been prevaricating on the subject of attending the Nawaz Sharif organized opposition summit in London. Suddenly all this has changed.

As your Blogger adamantly maintains, there is no such thing as a coincidence in the murky world of Pakistani power shenanigans.

So the day that Musharraf finally came clean about his re-election plans on TV was the very same day it was announced that Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif would co-chair the March 24-25 all-party conference in London.

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In common with all military rulers Musharraf has come to enjoy the trappings of power and has no intention of letting go. Rumour has it that the grisly model of Hosni Mubarik, who has reigned over Egypt since 1982, is one that he wishes to emulate. Sadly for Musharraf, your Blogger stoutly contends that the Pakistanis will not prove to be as compliant as the poor downtrodden Egyptians.

As Dr. Hasan-Askari Rizvi noted nearly a month ago in the Daily Times:

If President Pervez Musharraf opts for this strategy, in total disregard of constitutional and ethical considerations, Pakistan will be faced with a head-on collision between the pro-and anti-Musharraf elements.

Such a confrontation will undermine the political interests of both General Pervez Musharraf and the opposition. It will also have negative ramifications for Pakistan’s political credibility at the global level.

Five years ago, Musharraf orchestrated a farcical referendum to prolong his self-imposed presidency. Now he is insisting on another ludicrous scenario whereby the present outgoing national and provincial assemblies ‘will re-elect’ him to a new five-year term as president

To my mind seven years of military rule has created a pressure-cooker environment. What Pakistanis (with the exception of the profiteering elite) require is a safety valve. If it is not given to them via the ballot box, there is a looming prospect of violent urban disturbances.

Pakistan