General Pervez Musharraf’s strategy for survival has finally become clear, after months of political turmoil in Pakistan. He plans to quit as chief of the army staff, before taking the presidential oath — but only after he has been re-elected by the outgoing parliament. The plan, put forward this week by his chief lawyer, Sharifuddin Pirzada, was the first clear official statement that the general is ready to end military rule, eight years after he seized power.
The party of the exiled opposition leader and former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, denounced the plan as unconstitutional and undemocratic. But it is equally clear that negotiations on a power-sharing deal between the unpopular general and Bhutto, which centre on the demand that Musharraf leaves the army, will continue. If Musharraf is bowing to popular pressure, well and good. But there remain three sizable hurdles before the plan can be put into practice.
The first is that it was announced in the form of a submission to the supreme court, which is hearing petitions from opposition parties challenging Musharraf’s dual role as president and army chief. If the supreme court rules against the president all bets are off. The second issue is that Musharraf has to get re-elected by Parliament next month, in the face of a determined attempt by opposition parties to render the vote invalid by resigning en masse.
But the third and most important question is how long Musharraf, who has no natural political constituency and who has made himself deeply unpopular, would survive in civvies as president. He has been reluctant to end military rule because it means abandoning his only source of power. The army is taking a hammering in its campaign against Islamist militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas. It has lost 59 men since the start of the month, and militants are still holding 250 soldiers hostage after a convoy was hijacked in South Waziristan. If he leaves the army he loses operational control over it, and with it the ability to contain dissent.
There is no doubt that a power-sharing deal between Musharraf and Bhutto would be Washington’s preferred option for an ally that remains the centrepiece of its war against al-Qaeda. But whether such a deal would be good for Pakistan is another matter. The three elites that run the country — the military, the bureaucracy and the civilian elite — are rearranging the chairs. But what is not happening is a remodelling of the system that has regularly produced these crises. Pakistan’s institutions, including the supreme court, are still dangerously dependent on their political masters. — Â