Benazir`s U-turn

Published : Dec 07, 2007 00:00 IST

A press conference at Benazir`s residence in Lahore on November 16. She was freed from house arrest shortly before U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Negroponte came to Pakistan. - MIAN KHURSHEED/REUTERS

A press conference at Benazir`s residence in Lahore on November 16. She was freed from house arrest shortly before U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Negroponte came to Pakistan. - MIAN KHURSHEED/REUTERS

Benazir Bhutto goes at Musharraf hammer and tongs, but observers are still sceptical about the shift in her position.

A press conference

Residents of Defence, Lahores poshest housing colony, had never seen anything like it before. On November 13, outside their high-gated villas, where they would normally walk their dogs or go for a jog, were an entire road blocked off with steel barricades; three lorries, brightly painted in the truck-art style popular in Pakistan, standing back to back across the road and forming the second layer of the blockade; hundreds of policemen in uniform and plainclothes; protesters who were swiftly thrown into police vans and driven away; and at least 100 journalists from all over the globe.

Behind the barricades was the home of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator Latheef Khosa, where party leader Benazir Bhutto had only a few hours before been served with a seven-day house-arrest order to prevent her from leading a march from Lahore through the Punjab province all the way to Islamabad. Benazir had called the march to demand that President Pervez Musharraf lift the state of emergency, release all political workers who had been arrested since its imposition, and roll back the curbs on the media.

Within a few hours of her house arrest, however, working the phones to Western journalists at the barricades, Benazir added to her list of demands one more that she had never made before: Musharraf must stand down, not just as army chief but as President. She said that he had become part of the problem, that he was siding with extremists, and that it was time for the international community to devise an exit strategy for him.

It was a 180 turn by Benazir. Less than a month before, on account of a deal with Musharraf, Zulfikar Ali Bhuttos daughter returned to Pakistan after eight years of self-exile in Dubai and London. Under the terms of the deal, her party gave tacit support to the Generals October 6 re-election as President in return for a presidential National Reconciliation Ordinance wiping the slate clean of all the corruption cases against her. Though thousands of party workers from all corners of Pakistan turned out to greet her in Karachi, her political reputation, and that of the PPPs, was in tatters for having made a deal with the military ruler.

After two bombs, apparently targeting Benazir, ripped through the welcome procession killing 140 people, many of them PPP workers, the former Prime Minister, who escaped unhurt, blamed individuals in the government for conspiring to kill her. In a letter to Musharraf before her arrival in Pakistan, Benazir had named them. Pakistani media later revealed that these individuals were Punjab Chief Minister Pervez Elahi, Intelligence Bureau chief Brigadier (retd.) Ejaz Shah and former National Accountability Bureau (NAB) official Hassan Waseem Afzal (he was handling the corruption cases against her). In the same letter, in another list of three people she wanted investigated in case of an attempt on her life, Benazir dropped Afzals name and included former Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lt. Gen. (retd.) Hamid Gul. But she said she would not blame Musharraf and defended her negotiations with him as a dialogue for a smooth transition to democracy and civilian rule.

Those who stood for a Benazir-Musharraf alliance as the best antidote to tackle the rising extremism and militancy in Pakistan warned Benazir not to push the General by attacking those close to him, as it could sour the deal and spoil the chances of a coalition of moderates taking charge of the country. Her remarks triggered a war of words between the ruling faction of the Pakistan Muslim League and the PPP, placing Musharraf between his old band of supporters and his new ally. Nonetheless, many were prepared to bet that the alliance would weather this storm.

Musharrafs November 3 imposition of a state of emergency changed the script completely. Benazir could no longer afford to be seen in contact with the regime. A day earlier, she had left for Dubai, ostensibly to see her children, husband and mother who live there. But many said she had left the country on prior information that Musharraf was about to take the extreme step of imposing emergency rule. A stinging editorial in Dawn on the morning of November 3 drew attention to the uncertain times facing the country and the rumours of a state of emergency, and asked Benazir to return immediately putting Pakistans interests before her familys.

Benazir returned to Karachi hours after the declaration of emergency. Her credibility had sunk to such depths that even then it was thought that she had returned only to take charge of a caretaker government under Musharrafs emergency. Some said Benazir stood to gain by the state of emergency mainly, a coup against the judiciary as the National Reconciliation Ordinance could now be implemented unchallenged by the courts.

The question was why Benazir, the only political leader present in the country with demonstrated ability to bring people out on the streets, had not been jailed, while those who could not gather more than a few dozens at best, such as former cricketer and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf leader Imran Khan or the Pakistan Muslim League (N)s Javed Hashmi, or civil society activists such as Asma Jahangir, had been arrested. Many doubted if she would actually take on the regime.

The first sign of defiance in Benazir came on November 7, four days after the imposition of emergency rule, when she declared that the government must lift martial law and reinstate the sacked Supreme Court judges. This was the first time she made a demand on behalf of the judiciary. She also demanded that Musharraf, as army chief, fix a time frame for elections, release political prisoners and lift the restrictions on the media. Or else, Benazir said, she would lead a long march from Lahore to Islamabad on November 13. She also threatened to turn a rally scheduled for November 9 at Rawalpindi into a mass protest against the emergency.

Even on November 9, there were few takers for the apparent battle of nerves between Benazir and the police personnel who threw a ring around her Zardari House in Islamabad and prevented her from going to Rawalpindi. The excuse the government gave was an intelligence report about the presence of seven or eight suicide bombers in Rawalpindi, all targeting Benazir. The police cordoned off all roads leading to Rawalpindi, the twin city of the Pakistan capital, and PPP workers who tried to break through the barricades were baton-charged and tear-gassed. Some were arrested.

Outside her home, more journalists than PPP activists had gathered as she tried to drive through the barricades before being blocked by an armoured car. Confined to her home, she railed against the blockade and the security personnel. The government had issued an order for her house arrest but it was never served. The U.S. demanded that the restrictions on her be lifted. Late at night, the government announced that it had withdrawn the detention orders.

The medias unanimous opinion was that the whole episode was a well-choreographed drama that allowed Benazir to regain her credibility and let Musharraf save face. She had seemingly defied Musharraf by trying to break through the barriers instead of being seen as caving in to the regimes demand not to hold a rally in Rawalpindi, but finally accepted her confinement.

But Benazir kept upping the ante. The next day, she made a surprise appearance outside the barricaded home of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary, demanding she be allowed to meet him. When security personnel prevented her, she made a speech right there describing Chaudhary as the real Chief Justice and asking for his immediate restoration. Her next stop was at the Islamabad offices of Aaj TV, banned since the imposition of emergency, where scores of journalists were gathered in protest against two new ordinances curtailing editorial freedom of the electronic and print media. She expressed solidarity with the journalists and declared she would go ahead with the long march against the emergency.

Supporters of Nawaz

When she arrived in Lahore on November 11 to prepare for the march two days later, it was quite certain that the government would not allow it to go ahead. Meanwhile, Musharrafs attitude towards her also seemed to have hardened. At his first press conference after the imposition of emergency, he her popularity as a figment of journalistic imagination. Musharraf also distanced himself from a power-sharing arrangement with her, saying that only the PPPs performance in the next elections would determine whether she could become the next Prime Minister. He charged her with vitiating the atmosphere for reconciliation by accusing members of the government of trying to kill her.

On the day before the planned march, there was a gradual build-up of security personnel outside Senator Khosas home, where Benazir was camping in Lahore. By evening, the barricades were in place and 200 policemen were deployed around the house. Early next day, hours before she was to set off on the march, she was served house-arrest orders.

After that, for the first time, Benazir took on Musharraf directly. In a battery of interviews to the Western media, she explained her change in position as the result of the imposition of emergency. I started negotiations with him on a road map to democracy, but he has gone back on his promises by imposing martial law, she said. Claiming that thousands of PPP activists had been arrested in a countrywide crackdown, Benazir said that she had broken off all contact with Musharraf and that he was not acceptable any more to her even as a civilian President.

She demanded that a coalition of interests take over the reins of Pakistan to conduct the general elections. From his exile in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan Muslim League (N) leader Nawaz Sharif immediately welcomed her stand and expressed readiness to work with her. Conveying she was serious about working with other opposition parties, she lost no time in making calls to all leaders, including Sharif, and even those with whom she did not want to share the opposition platform earlier, such as Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of the right-wing religious Jamat-i-Islami.

I know that coalition-building is a difficult task. There will be many obstacles, but I am prepared to face them, she said, after being released from house arrest three days ahead of schedule, a few hours before the arrival of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte.

Observers wonder whether the shift in her position is a genuine change of heart or brinkmanship to pile pressure on Musharraf to lift the emergency before the elections. Another line of thinking is that her position may, in fact, indicate a shift in the U.S. thinking about Musharraf that the George Bush administration no longer wants to back him and is using Benazir to articulate its own changing policy.

But more and more sceptics say it is time to take her seriously. She wanted to work with Musharraf, she wanted the deal, but she has been overtaken by events, and dragged kicking and screaming by the pressure within her own party, from her supporters outside, into the opposition camp, said Rashid Rehman, executive editor of The Post.

Shafquat Mahmood, a former PPP Member of Parliament and one of Benazirs most scathing critics in the past few months for her deal with Musharraf wrote in a recent article in The News: She has executed a huge U-turn and this is not without reason. She has finally fathomed the intensity of hatred within the country and being an astute observer of the international scene, has concluded that his support abroad is rapidly eroding. Her turnaround, he said, has the potential of pushing Musharraf out of power.

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