From behind a blockade

Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto tells Pervez Musharraf to quit. -From Economist.com

INVITING unhappy comparisons with Mahatma Gandhi and Mao Zedong, Benazir Bhutto, who leads the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), was foiled in her plan to lead a “long march” from Lahore to Islamabad on Tuesday November 13th. The march—in fact, a 270km journey by a motorcade—had been planned to protest against the imposition of martial law by President Pervez Musharraf on November 3rd. But a few hours before its scheduled start, Miss Bhutto was placed under house arrest for a week.

Defying an official ban, and a serious risk of terrorist attack, a convoy of several dozen PPP vehicles left Lahore for the country’s capital. But most observers remained fixed on the townhouse in Lahore—newly designated a “sub-jail” and blockaded by police—where Miss Bhutto had been detained.

In a series of surprisingly aggressive statements, she announced the end of year-long negotiations between herself and General Musharraf to share power after a general election due by January 15th. She also called for General Musharraf to quit as president. “It’s time for him to leave,” she said. “There are no circumstances in which I could see myself serving with President Musharraf.”

On the face of it, this represented a dramatic hardening of Miss Bhutto’s opposition to General Musharraf—the strength of which has been open to doubt. Miss Bhutto returned from an eight-year self-imposed exile last month after the general granted her amnesty from corruption charges relating to her two terms in power. In return, Miss Bhutto ordered her party not to quit Parliament, as every other opposition party did, when General Musharraf got himself re-elected as president last month.

Even after General Musharraf suspended the constitution on November 3rd, it has been hard to know which side Miss Bhutto was on. While thousands of other opposition party members were arrested, the PPP’s supporters were initially left at large. That changed somewhat on November 9th, when police foiled Miss Bhutto’s attempt to hold another protest rally, in Rawalpindi. Thousands of PPP supporters were arrested and Miss Bhutto was put under house arrest for the first time—but only for a day.

Still doubting her oppositionist zeal, other political enemies of the general, including the Pakistan Muslim League (N) party, led by Nawaz Sharif, an exiled former prime minister, refused to join her long drive to Islamabad. Most of them have said they will boycott the election which General Musharraf has promised will still be held in January. On Monday Miss Bhutto said the PPP might take the same step.

Insiders say that trusted advisers of Miss Bhutto and the general will meet on November 13th to try to salvage at least a possibility of future co-operation between the pair. Yet Miss Bhutto seems close—at least—to concluding that this is no longer in her interests. It is not hard to see why.

According to the broad terms of the hypothetical power-sharing deal, General Musharraf would quit his role as army chief and guarantee Miss Bhutto a free and fair election. If the PPP proceeded to win this—as Miss Bhutto believes it would—the party would support General Musharraf as a strong, civilian president. And Miss Bhutto would hope to serve a third term as prime minister.

But since his recent power-grab General Musharraf has appeared minded to honour neither the terms of this putative agreement nor his basic constitutional obligations. He launched his coup—as he has all but admitted—in order to forestall a possibility that the country’s Supreme Court judges might declare his presidential re-election to have been illegal, because he was a serving soldier at the time. He has since sacked most of the Supreme Court's judges, including the chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, who is also under arrest. “Nobody is above the law, ladies and gentleman,” he told journalists on Sunday, in reference to Pakistan’s most senior judge.

General Musharraf said that the general election may be held on January 9th. But he has not suggested when he might restore the constitution and withdraw the draconian provisions of the current emergency: including bans on private television news channels and on political gatherings. This has raised a fear, in the PPP and everywhere, that the election campaign—or the vote itself—might be held under these conditions. Such an election would be a farce—as, to varying degrees, were the four previous ones held under General Musharraf.