New Delhi, May 14 (ANI): Essentially, or broadly, the vote in Pakistan's recent elections has been democratic despite the usual complaints of rigging and booth capturing.
Nawaz Sharif is the man of the hour as the unchallenged winner, eagerly acknowledged by his neighbour. Nawaz has won Punjab spectacularly, but equally spectacularly, has lost the other three provinces, reducing himself to a provincial leader of what, in effect, is a provincial party, while his brother will preside over a PML(N) Government in Punjab.
MQM leader Altaf Hussain, whose party retained control of Karachi, was making a point when he congratulated Nawaz as the leader of a Punjabi representative party.
Imran Khan has Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where the secular Awami National Party has been wiped out.
Asif Zardari's PPP lost heavily and has been reduced to rural Sindh.
The army retains Balochistan, where an assortment of Baloch nationalists led a successful boycott of the elections.
Right wing parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Jamaat-Ulema-Islami (Fazlur Rehman) won a few seats in Khyber Pakhtunkwah and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
It is really a divided house that Nawaz Sharif will be ruling and it will require considerable skills to manage a seemingly strong government, but in reality, representing only one province.
Obviously, this is a situation which GHQ Rawalpindi would love while it maintains the image of its neutrality and embellishes its democratic credentials, which will keep the U.S. on its side, but all failures will continue to be at the door of the political leadership.
The new prime minister, with a comfortable majority, will have to deal with a new Chief of Army Staff, a new Chief Justice and a new President, as all three complete their terms later this year.
This could be to Nawaz's advantage, but expect some hard bargaining on this.
The emerging situation may not make for the kind of shaky governments that the army prefers to deal with, but, the present arrangement would be quite satisfactory for the generals.
It would be useful for Nawaz Sharif to remember that elections are only the beginning of other harder enduring problems. Terror, economy, power shortages, a radicalised society with an impatient youth who will expect that having voted, there will be an automatic solution to their problems and a fulfillment of their dreams.
In the run up to the electoral campaign, there were reports that major political parties had sought the help of the sectarian mafia to reach out to their voters and there were places that could only be reached with the help of these sectarian extremists.
Many of them stood for elections and it is true that they may not have won more than a small percentage (some say ten per cent) of the votes cast, but their indirect influence is far greater than the votes polled by them.
The PML(N) had entered into electoral adjustments with the banned sectarian terrorist outfit, the Sipah-e-Sahaba, renamed as the Ahel Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ), used them for election campaigns, and even gave party tickets to two SSP candidates, Abid Raza Gujjar and Sardar Ebad.
Mohammed Taqi, a well known Pakistani commentator, pointed out that Imran Khan, who lost his Lahore seat to an unknown PML(N) opponent, gave himself away when he denigrated the Ahmediyas in a video message.
This had apparently been cleared by the Dar-ul-Uloom Haqqania, from where a number of Taliban and Haqqani Network luminaries had graduated. There will be a price to be paid for this in the future.
The Jamaat-e-Islami has already made its first move, when it said its support to Nawaz was dependent on the PML(N) attitude towards the MQM in Karachi.
There was specifically targeted violence against the ANP in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and in Karachi against the PPP and MQM by the Tehrik Taliban Pakistan, but there was no violence in Punjab.
The result has been a victory for the Taliban friendly PTI and its leader Imran Khan in the northwestern province who, some believe is the man best suited to talk to the Taliban and bring peace to the country.
Speaking to the Taliban is something that the U.S., anxious to leave, would also want to happen, and it is even better if an elected representative of the Pakistan National Assembly lends respectability to this.
Then, there is the Pakistan Army with its owns foreign policy and security priorities, which are also not going to change. All this, will require statesmanship, fortitude and cooperation with other parties and, above all, managing the army and a hyperactive judiciary.
The widely acknowledged liberal and secular Awami National Party (ANP) that owed allegiance to Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan's ideology has been the biggest loser in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, giving way to the PTI.
The Khan's grandson, Asfandyar Wali Khan, lost to a JUI(F) opponent. Another ANP leader, Mian Ifthikar Hussein, whose son had been killed by the Taliban three years ago, was defeated by a Taliban supported candidate.
This is a pity, as the ones who will now rule, are from the hard right.
A pro-Taliban PTI government in Peshawar, if its leader's pre-election statements are to be taken seriously, would certainly be expected to help the army in dealing more aggressively with Afghanistan.
The PTI can be expected to be more amenable to the Pakistan Army's security issues rather than the ANP. In addition, keeping the turbulent Baloch under ruthless army control, ensures that the Pakistan -Afghan border is dealt with by governments more sympathetic to Rawalpindi.
Pakistan society has been radicalising almost from the first day and the liberals have struggled to retain their ability to make a difference in Pakistan politics and, at times, have compromised with the power elite.
In this context, Ayesha Siddiqa's essay "The New Frontiers: Militancy and Radicalism in Punjab" (February 4 2013) highlights this and the fact that the province, which has almost 50 per cent of the country's population, is "rapidly and consistently undergoing a process of radicalisation."
The jihadists were consolidating themselves and preparing for an offensive war, while the liberals in Punjab were losing ground and had begun to exhibit "latent radical tendencies".
There are others who are concerned too. In a recent discussion in Washington D.C. by the Hudson Institute on "Elections in Pakistan: Any Hope for a Secular Government?", Farahnaz Ispahani also spoke of the the inabilities of ruling democratic governments to withstand the onslaughts of the radical extremists, including the Pakistan Taliban and other extremists supported by the establishment.
At the same discussion, Mohammed Taqi, pointed out that Pakistan was swinging into a hard right kind of governance in Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar. In such a situation, with the radicals running amok these past few years, Nawaz Sharif's biggest challenge, assuming he desires to do so, will be to curb them and reassure his own minorities, including the Ahmediyas.
Will he have the political courage and sagacity to do this? Political bargaining for coalition support has already begun.
Nothing much should be expected on the India-Pakistan front in the context of coalition politics and internal governance that will emerge in Pakistan and the Army's preoccupation with Afghanistan post 2014.
Sharif's coalition partners or supporters are from the right of the political and religious spectrum, and forays with India will be more a diversion than any serious effort.
The usual discourse will not disappear. Nawaz is less likely to be able to launch a full enquiry into the Kargil debacle.
The army will simply not allow this to happen. Nor, will he be able to reign in the jihadi hordes.
At best, there could be more business suiting Nawaz's own business interests and those of the Ludhiana-Jalandhar-Amritsar axis. Sweet nothings and grand promises at the start of a tenure are natural but, need not beguile us so long as 'core' issues remain.
This is not to say that peace between India and Pakistan is not desirable. But one election does not make it any the more attainable.
Let the euphoria on both sides evaporate a little, and then, let there be an assessment based on realistic assumptions that also take into account the enormity of domestic problems on both sides before we rush into disappointments.
Source : Yahoo News , 14th May 2013
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