Insight: PPP’s rational choice —Ejaz Haider
The decision to contest the elections is therefore the only sensible course. As for the concerns about restoring the balance within the system, that is an issue which requires a comprehensive strategy at multiple levels, both within and outside the government

The Pakistan People’s Party has
decided to contest the elections. This is a rational calculation and seems based on four factors.

First, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League has had to hunker down and is not really in a position to win the elections; indeed, even before Ms Bhutto’s death, it was clear that the party, despite relying heavily on the administrative machinery and support, was unable to find its rhythm and would need a partial umpire to retain its presence. The situation has only worsened for it.

Two, the PPP, which was already getting into the swing when Bhutto died, can now plausibly count on a sympathy wave. This could allow the party to gain even outside its traditional vote-bank and strongholds. The floating vote, which in Pakistan normally comprises about 30 percent of the total vote, could show a major swing in PPP’s favour.

Three, it is important for the party to go into elections while the iron, so to speak, is still hot. Passions and sympathy are powerful factors, strong enough to change things. But they are also short-lived by their very nature — people always have difficulty sustaining high adrenaline levels. It was clear from Asif Ali Zardari’s press conference yesterday that the party may be alive to the issue of timing: the party has not only not asked for a national reconciliation government as a condition for contesting elections but has also indicated that it is ready for the elections according to the original schedule on January 8.

Four, it would now be extremely difficult for the sitting governments, for the most part partial to the ruling League, to try and hijack the election in favour of a discredited party. The mood on the street makes any large-scale, planned attempt at rigging nearly impossible (the only way this can be done is if the current dispensation acts in the most stupid manner and ignores public perception).

Another important factor, in the reverse, which might have contributed to the party’s decision to contest could be the thought that boycotting would have then required the party to bring the current edifice down through means other than expressing itself through elections and a political process.

It can of course be argued that the PPP should have taken that route; that after the Nawaz League decided to boycott the elections the PPP could have followed suit and in fact become the thin end of the wedge against General (retd) Pervez Musharraf. This line of reasoning can also be beefed up by pointing out that until Musharraf is gotten rid of, Pakistan cannot really move forward and purge itself of those structural and constitutional anomalies that comprise the Musharrafian system.

The thrust of this argument would be that by contesting the elections the PPP would be getting sucked into the very system it must bring down; that it would be allowing its credentials to be defaced, indeed effaced.

This argument has its merits; not only is it rooted in the normative, there are real concerns like the balance of power between the president and the prime minister, the internal harmony of the constitution, the problem that unless this harmony is restored and institutionalised, the system will remain inherently unstable etc.

These cannot be ignored simply because unless the balance is restored, we may be adding another unstable phase to Pakistan’s chequered history. However, if it is accepted that opting out would mean a confrontational stance and more instability then the issue becomes more a matter of strategy than objectives. Consider.

One of the planks the PPP is using is to present itself as the only federation-based political option for pulling Pakistan out of its current crisis. But it can do so only if it stays in the game. Were it to opt out, it would then have to use its street power in tandem with other parties and get into a confrontation with the government. That situation not only throws up its own uncertainties, it also throws up another problem: the party’s major support-base is Sindh and Sindhi sentiment at this moment is anti-federation. The PPP will have to rely on that sentiment and that could create trouble for its image and standing as a party representing the federation.

Additionally, getting into a confrontation with the government does not promise in and of itself a change of structures. It thus makes eminent sense for the party to present Bhutto as the symbol of the federation and channel the sentiment across Pakistan into an electoral exercise rather than splintering it along ethnic lines by — if it were to opt out — necessarily relying on its ethnic Sindhi shock troops.

Of course, as Zardari said in the press conference, the option to take a different course remains and if the elections were rigged then “we would talk on January 9”. That not-so-veiled threat signals to the establishment that Pakistan’s greater good lies in the course the party has taken despite the ultimate provocation — i.e., the assassination of its leader — but the other, more unpalatable, option remains open. It is now up to the government to prevent the PPP, and with it the political opposition, to not exercise that option.

The decision to contest the elections is therefore the only sensible course. As for the concern about restoring the balance within the system, that is an issue which requires a comprehensive strategy at multiple levels, both within and outside the government.

If the PPP indeed manages the kind of win it expects, and plausibly, it should be in a position, given the political consensus on the need to correct the imbalance, to be able to take measures that could work to the advantage of the political actors.

Ejaz Haider is Op-Ed Editor of Daily Times and Consulting Editor of The Friday Times. He can be reached at sapper@dailytimes.com.pk