With former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto assassinated on the campaign trail, her Pakistan People's Party quickly regrouped and named her 19-year old son and political naif Bilawal as the head of the party, to be aided by his father, Asif Ali Zardari. Despite all the talk of fostering democracy, Pakistan's leading party, the PPP, chose to follow the feudal path. In doing so, the party ignored Pakistan's political parties' laws that prohibit anyone below 25 years from holding a political office. In a nod to the magic of his mother's family name, young Bilawal changed his own from Bilawal Zardari to Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. Over the years, Zardari has become a keen political operator but he lacks the aura of the Bhutto name and his critics contend that he lacks the gravitas of a statesman, who can bring the country together and win an election next month against heavy odds.
Bhutto's party decided to contest the upcoming elections and persuaded former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to re-enter the electoral fray. Meanwhile, the compliant Election Commission, no doubt aware of President Pervez Musharraf's preference, announced the postponement of the elections from January 8 to February 18. While on the surface these are all good signs of political continuity, they hide deep fault lines in Pakistan's body politic. Major issues lurk beneath the surface that will bedevil Pakistani politics unless they are addressed in short order.
First, the People's Party missed an opportunity to transform itself into a true transnational political party with a broad professional base for the future. By reverting to dynastic tradition in choosing its leadership, it put itself in the same box as the other major parties of Pakistan. Both the Pakistan Muslim Leagues, (Q) and (N), are run as family enterprises. The People's Party risks being overtaken by other more progressive forces in Pakistan. And it risks defections from its ranks, especially in the key province of Punjab, by alienating seasoned politicians like Aitzaz Ahsan, Jehangir Badar, and Shah Mehmood Qureshi. Ahsan is still under house arrest because of his principled approach to the restoration of the judiciary. The other two leaders were conspicuously absent from prominence at the press conference that anointed Bilawal for the leadership slot. With the politics of Pakistan so polarized today between the parties, each has its own vote bank and no real ability to draw any undecided voters. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the PPP may find it hard to get a huge sentimental bounce from the horrific death of its leader, especially in the face of institutional rigging from the rump of the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) group, the "King's party" of Musharraf that populates large swathes of the provincial administrations and the caretaker government.
Second, the judiciary in Pakistan still remains chained by the extra-legal fiats of Musharraf that allowed him to alter the constitution and replace the senior judges, who might have kept a check on his powers, with his own men. Only Sharif and the Islamic alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (which is also boycotting the elections), have asked for the restoration of the judiciary. Both the People's Party and Pakistan's major Western ally, the United States administration, have kept quiet on the issue of restoring the judges. Until the judiciary is restored, Pakistan's managed parliamentary system will continue to be subservient to an autocratic president, with Musharraf calling all the shots, even though he has formally relinquished his army position.
Third, even if any of the major opposition parties win big in the National Assembly elections, they will be hobbled by the huge sitting majority in the Senate of the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) that Musharraf created and supported. A legislative deadlock will ensue, that presages paralysis in dealing with the critical problems that face Pakistan.
Fourth, the root causes of the Islamist insurgency in the western borderlands, a blowback from the Afghanistan conflict remain un-attacked. The tribal areas remain outside the purview of Pakistan's legal system and excluded from the national legal framework. They continue to be operated under tribal traditional law, and there has not been significant economic development in the region. Despite the importance of transforming the region that has close links to the Taliban, since 9/11 neither the US nor the Pakistan government showed any visible signs of major economic and social investment in the tribal badlands. No wonder, the disaffection there started overflowing into the settled areas of Pakistan. Worse, the suicide bombers are clearly no longer imported from the Afghan insurgency but increasingly are homegrown Islamist members of the economic and political underclass of Pakistan itself. When political expression is under tight control, with the media under restrictions and public gatherings of men and women broken up by baton-swinging policemen, violence offers a tempting alternative. Witness the growing number of hitherto "moderate" men and women from leading educational institutions who have come out to protest the government's clampdown on media and political freedoms and suffered at the hands of a vicious governmental reaction. These moderates have to be the backbone against the growing "Talibanization" of the country, but the political crackdown under Musharraf's military rule and even under the caretaker government has just alienated this important element of the population.
Fifth, by aligning itself with one man, Pervez Musharraf, and one course of action, early elections rather than restoration of the constitution, the judiciary, and the free press, the United States administration may be taking a short cut that will lead into a dead end. For elections alone do not ensure a return to democracy. Institutions do. In Pakistan today, the intelligentsia has been cowered into submission by the weight and unbridled use of governmental power and is fast becoming inconsequential. Rather than providing leadership to the forces of change, the economic upper class has chosen to cocoon itself against the waves of political change that engulf the country today.
Finally, even the Pakistan army, seen by many as a captive of the nationwide Culture of Entitlement and its attendant perks and privileges, as well as preferential access to state resources, has chosen not to press as yet for a change of the status quo. Its new chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, was hemmed in by Musharraf's last-minute appointments of loyalists to key intelligence and command slots before Musharraf shed his uniform as army chief. Kayani, a man in whom the country has high hopes of professionalism and who is also seen as a potential agent of change, has yet to assert his control by appointing his own senior commanders. The Bhutto assassination is a huge test for him since he may well need to investigate the possibility that rogue elements in the intelligence apparatus, flying under the false flag of the Taliban or Al Qaeda, could have been implicated in her death. At the very least he needs unequivocally to cut the army's ties to militant Islamist groups. Many in Pakistan were heartened by his recent statement to his corps commanders that "Ultimately it is the will of the people and their support that is decisive." They will be waiting to see if there is a gap between the intentions and the actions of the new chief.
Musharraf has often spoken about restoring democracy to Pakistan. So have Sharif and Bhutto. But as Bhutto texted me on her Blackberry from Dubai about one of Musharraf's statements before her return to Pakistan: "What people say and what happens r two diff things". Or as W.H. Auden put it: "Word have no words, for words that are untrue." The onus now is on Musharraf and Pakistan's political and military leaders to deliver on their promises. The underlying issues are huge and will not go away. Until these are tackled, Pakistan's many wars within may end up consuming whatever economic and political progress was made in the past and endangering the stability of the country and the region.
Shuja Nawaz is the author of Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its army, and the wars within (forthcoming) from Oxford University Press. He regularly appears as a commentator on television, radio, and at think tanks.