THE season of alliances and allies is upon us. Overtures are being made and new friendships being forged while old ones are being renewed as well. But no one is hoping for a happy ending. Instead it is a time for cynicism and pre nups.

Consider the firebrand politician who walked out of her parent party some time last year. She recently got in touch with the latest political flavour, the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf.

Whether or not she approved of the party and its politics, we will never know as the negotiations fell apart because she could not get in writing a commitment from the party leadership that she would be given a party post. She walked away. She ain’t the only one haggling over the terms and conditions of a contract.

The first ones, if the newspaper reports were to be believed, were the Chaudhries. Left high and dry by the departure of Gen Pervez Musharraf and then the lack of generosity (to forgive and forget) of the Sharifs, the PML-Q had no choice but to join hands with the Pakistan People’s Party.

That it was a marriage of convenience was evident from the agreement that was said to have been signed. The distribution of ministries, the share of the PML-Q in the forthcoming Senate elections and the seat-adjustment formula to be implemented for the next general elections — all these were decided and then put down in black and white.

However, it never really became clear if Pervez Elahi’s elevation to deputy prime minister was part of the written agreement or just wishful thinking on the part of the Q-Leaguers. The problem was that neither of the two sides spoke of this issue publicly. So one never learnt which was a written condition and which one a verbal one and who did or didn’t keep their part of the bargain.

Nonetheless, the notion of written agreements found favour with others too apart from the firebrand former parliamentarian.
Inspired similarly has been the Likeminded group. It may not approve of the Chaudhries’ politics (they left the PML-Q to form their own group) but they do like the former’s idea of guarantees.

Hence, as the Likeminded approached the PML-N for an alliance (once again convenience comes to mind) there is a written agreement at stake the conditions of which are being thrashed out. Here too the haggling is not about abstract notions such as politics, ideology and manifestoes but hard-core issues such as who will get which seat in which constituency.

Lest one think that no decisions of principle are involved, there are. The agreement also includes a formulation to figure out who will get the ticket on a seat that was not won by either of the two parties in the last election.

The last one heard the dialogue had come unstuck on the issue of which seat Humayun Akhtar Khan would contest from. Is there not something deliciously ironic about the son of Gen Abdul Rehman Akhtar asking the protégé of Gen Ziaul Haq for a written guarantee?

We have come pretty far from the era of Zia when all his followers and cronies were united on one platform and didn’t need contracts to stay together. Agreed that in all these cases, what we are talking about is more a nuptial agreement than a pre-nup.
But the underlying principle is essentially the same.

These contracts imply that the two parties don’t trust each other. The alliance is nothing more than a necessity for electoral politics, and issues of policy are irrelevant to say the least. The forced marriage will last as long as it will and while it lasts, a piece of paper will decide who is obliged to do what for the other.

There is no honour among these thieves.

It is not just the people that see the politicians as untrustworthy; they share this opinion of themselves.

Earlier there was at least a modicum of ideology that the politicians catered to. As recently as 2008 politicians signed agreements in the full glare of publicity because the contract was for causes more worthy than seat adjustments.

There was the Charter of Democracy that brought together Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif and then BB’s widower and Sharif came together in Bhurban for another set of principles. That both agreements lasted for as long as the politicians wanted them to was another story altogether. But at least there was a semblance of effort to make the electorate believe that there were principles that the politicians stood for. Both sides pretended there was a larger good that they were aspiring to.

But now there are only contracts for seats, posts and cabinet shares. And with the rush to ask the Supreme Court to decide everything from the possibility of coups to Hussain Haqqani’s travel plans, one can only presume that before long the judges will be asked to rule on the violations of these agreements by one party or the other.

And one need not bet that the Sharifs will be the first such petitioners to seek the court’s arbitration.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Islamabad.