Fair and furious

Awami National Party leader Asfand Yar Wali. The ANPs resurgence reiterates the theory of regionalisation of votes.-FAISAL MAHMOOD/REUTERS

The 2008 elections are hailed as the most free and fair in Pakistan since the 1970 exercise that led to the birth of Bangladesh.

ASK Ayaz Amir, a winning candidate in Pakistans February 18 elections, to explain the main reason for his victory. He would say that in a mood that was overwhelmingly against President Pervez Musharraf and his perceived pro-America policies, the single most important issue in his Chakwal constituency was the July 2007 Army commando strike on Islamabads Lal Masjid.

Amir, the candidate of the Nawaz Sharif-led Pakistan Muslim League (N), got the highest number of votes among all winners in the Punjab province. His campaign was almost entirely about the mosque. Stories about the atrocities allegedly committed by the military as it flushed out the militants who were hiding inside had taken on mythical proportions, he says. People were talking about how Musharraf had sent in the Army to kill five-year-old girls as they were reciting the Quran, Amir, a well-known newspaper columnist, recalls. For a while, his own campaign was in danger, as his opponents reproduced one of his pieces on the Lal Masjid episode that tore to pieces the maulvi who tried to escape from the mosque in a burqa. But, says Amir, he won because his anti-Musharraf credentials were too strong and too well-known.

Ask Sheikh Rashid, the former Railway Minister, why he lost both seats from which he contested in Rawalpindi. The cigar-smoking Rashid had never lost an election since 1985. He nursed Rawalpindi so well, setting up colleges and investing in all sorts of development work. But when the results came in, Rashid, who was one of the leading members of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Q) and an a unofficial spokesman for Musharraf, polled fewer than 5,000 votes against the winner, Javed Hashmi, a deputy to PML(N) leader Nawaz Sharif.

Rashid knew he had lost even before the counting began. Dispiritedly chewing on a Cuban Romeo not expensive like Cohiba the once flamboyant Rashid had the look of a defeated man as he sat surrounded by glum-looking supporters and journalists at his famous Lal Haveli in Rawalpindi on polling day. They finished us in the month before the elections. There was no atta [wheat flour], there was no gas, there was no electricity, he said.

A shortage of essentials had gripped the entire country in the crucial days ahead of February 18, something that, interestingly, many PML(Q) leaders sought to blame on the caretaker government that took over in November, even though it was an extension of the PML(Q). Wherever he went, Rashid said, he was mobbed by constituents demanding to know what his government was doing about the rising prices.

Even on such a bad day for him, Rashid was too much of a politician to lash out openly against Musharraf for his impending rout. But he talked about one last straw that had finished the election for him. Last night, [my opponents from the N League] put up banners everywhere saying that voting for those who carried out the Lal Masjid operation was kufr [against Islam].

In Lahore, Aitzaz Ahsan, the lawyer who ran former Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudharys legal battle for reinstatement and was an important leader in the legal communitys continued agitation, described the election results as an unambiguous rout for Musharraf. However, the firebrand lawyer, who is also a leader of stature in the Pakistan Peoples Party, attributed it to the way the President treated the judiciary. In detention since Musharrafs November 3 emergency declaration, Ahsan declared that Musharraf had no choice but to step down in the face of a vote that was so overwhelmingly against him.

Ask Mushahid Hussain too. The secretary-general of the PML(Q) is a senator, a member of Pakistans Upper House, and did not contest the election. According to him, the single most important reason for his partys defeat was the imposition of the emergency, and with it the sacking of the Chief Justice and nearly 60 other judges of the superior judiciary and the imposition of restrictions on the media.

But as politicians, journalists and political analysts thrash out the reasons for the definitive rout of the PML(Q) and the victory of the PPP and the PML(N) in what is already being described as the countrys first defining election since 1970, the needle on the scale unfailingly swings to Musharraf the vote was against his political ally, his mistakes, his governments policies, and his governments failures.

Eight years after Musharraf seized power from the elected government of Nawaz Sharif, Pakistanis voted overwhelmingly against the party that he constructed to give himself legitimacy in 2002 by hacking into PML(N) and the PPP. Voters made it clear that they wanted no more of this so-called Kings Party, or Q League.

Setting aside fears of violence on polling day, including apprehensions about election riggers and suicide bombers, 44.5 per cent of the over 80 million electorate turned out to exercise their franchise, 4 per cent more than in the infamous 2002 elections. Although they delivered a hung verdict, there was nothing ambiguous about it out with the ruling party, in with the opposition.

The PPP emerged as the single largest party, with 37 per cent of the votes and 88 of the 269 seats for which elections were held. Add to this a projected 22 reserved womens seats and three seats for minorities that the party will be allocated on the basis of its performance, and the PPP is all set to hold 113 seats in the 342-seat National Assembly. The party expected to do better, even win a majority of its own, riding a pro-Benazir sympathy wave.

That did not happen. If anything, the results have shown that Pakistanis voted overwhelmingly along regional lines even as they voted against Musharraf and the PML(Q). So, while the PPPs main success was in the Sindh province, in the Punjab, the largest and politically the most important province of the country, the day belonged to the PML(N).

In fact, the PML(N) did better than even Nawaz Sharifs expectations. When he returned at the end of November 2007, after a seven-year exile, the party was in disarray. Scrounging for electable candidates, the party was desperately offering the ticket even to activists of non-governmental organisations because it did not have a good enough stable of its own. To top it all, Sharif and his brother Shabaz were both disqualified from contesting. Still, Sharif was unfazed because his sights were set from the beginning not on this election but the next.

But the fury of the anti-Musharraf, anti-Q League vote gave the PML(N) 85 seats in the National Assembly and positioned it in a role for government formation in a possible coalition with the PPP in Islamabad. In the Punjab Assembly, where it bagged 102 of the 297 seats, the party was preparing to form the government with the help of the PPP, which won 79 seats. The success of the party is attributed to its strong position on national issues such as the imposition of the state of emergency and its pledge to reinstate the sacked judges.

Sharif also correctly felt the pulse of the anti-America sentiment sweeping through the country, and in this respect his was different from the PPP which, in Benazir Bhuttos time, had become too closely identified with American interests in the region.

For right-thinking Pakistanis, the most heartening news, however, was from the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), where voters unambiguously voted out the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a six-party religious coalition that had swept the elections in 2002. For the secular Awami National Party (ANP), which emerged as the single largest political force in the province both in the National Assembly and in the Provincial Assembly, the result was its best ever performance. It has naturally staked its claim to form the provincial government. The ANPs resurgence also reiterates the theory of regionalisation of the vote.

The ANPs remarkable showing and the surprising comeback by the PPP its share of parliamentary seats in the province was 10, the same number as the ANP can be described as a victory for moderate Pakhtuns and a rout for religious extremism, but it is good to keep in mind that there are other, not so visible, layers to this onion.

For one, the coalition had split in the days before the elections on the issue of boycotting the polls. The Jamat-e-Islami stayed away from the elections on the issue of the judiciary, but the Jamat-e-Ulema Islami (JuI), headed by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, decided to participate. The split could have been one of the reasons that saw the party plummet from 59 seats in the previous elections to just five in 2008.

But in the NWFP, of the six parties in the coalition, the JuI was predominant. So the party seems to have paid also for the Maulanas much-praised pragmatism that saw him play the role of the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament but cosying up to Musharraf on many issues. In an environment of America hatred in the NWFP, he was seen as too close to Musharraf, the man who brought the war. Many voters also turned away because of the MMAs failure to deliver on its election promises, including one to bring the province under Sharia law.

If further evidence of regionalisation of the vote is needed, in Balochistan, the boycott by the strong nationalist parties of the province ensured that this restive region is virtually unrepresented by those whose voices it is most important for the Pakistan federation to include. Instead, helped by the boycott, it was in this province that the PML(Q) put up its most impressive performance. The party won three of the 13 parliamentary seats in the province, and emerged as the single largest party in the Provincial Assembly. But with the PPP also putting up a strong performance for the Assembly, there is uncertainty about what kind of coalition government may emerge in Balochistan.

Days before polling, Musharraf promised Pakistan that this would be the mother of all elections. It was, but not in the way he expected. Until election eve, Musharraf was inexplicably confident that the PML(Q) would secure a majority. Despite the requirement of his office that he stay aloof from political affiliation, he made no secret of this prediction, only to be proved wrong 24 hours later. But credit is certainly due to him for not attempting to influence the result. With the eyes of the world on the elections, perhaps Musharraf had no choice but to accept the result.

Some serious flaws notwithstanding, the 2008 elections are being described by analysts as the most free and fair in the countrys history since the historic 1970 exercise that eventually led to the eastern wing of Pakistan breaking away to become Bangladesh.

Hopefully, the consequences of 2008 will have the opposite effect by strengthening Pakistan as a nation and fulfilling the inherent democratic aspirations of its people.