Benazir Bhutto—Will a Third Term Be the Charm? by Shazia Z. Rafi
October 11, 2007
Pinky Bhutto—Benazir’s school nickname in  Karachi—is coming back. Will she become prime minister of Pakistan a third time? Will three be the lucky number allowing her to complete a full term? Will a public deal with the military be better than the behind-the-scenes control exerted by the armed forces in her prior terms? Is her husband coming back and this time six steps behind?
Questions and misgivings surround the National Reconciliation Ordinance or the “deal” as it is called, because it is not the result of an open national truth and reconciliation process but a mutual indemnification among political and military leaders. There is a palpable excitement in political circles, however, for the return of active politics. Even the military is playing politics, negotiating publicly for its role. Political parties for the first time appear to have internal factions, challenging the interests of their leaders. Members of parliament, including those from the governing party, are giving opposing statements and are resigning for reasons of conscience!
The hope is that the return of Bhutto, and perhaps later the return of other exiled leaders, will bring political competition back on home soil. Pakistani politics had become a comic farce with leaders exiled in Dubai, Saudi Arabia and the UK. The resumption of full party politics will hopefully lessen the perception and reality of Pakistan as a nation run from abroad, by exiled leaders and by Washington.
Bhutto herself is a politician of contradictions. Scion of a feudal political family, she married back into the same fold and often uses the imperial phrase “my people.” Yet, she remains a charismatic figure linked to Pakistanis’ hopes for a more liberal, political system, and for a genuinely moderate Islam, where a modern woman can still be head of government. She is also a master strategist and certainly has a strong hold on the leadership of her party despite the years in exile and attempts to circumvent her. For feminists she presents a mixed record. Bhutto did open the higher judiciary to women, allowed women to become commercial airline pilots, and opened women's banks. Yet a part of her image and substance is traditional, even feudal, linked as it is to her family heritage and the legacy of her father, a former prime minister deposed in a coup.
In a country that ranks 138 on the Transparency International scale, the “deal” is a controversial amnesty for corruption and other crimes, including crimes against humanity, covering not only Bhutto but every leader, including the military, from 1986 to 1999.
But this amnesty and mutual indemnification may not be so easy to implement. Two institutions are more independent than they have been before, the legal system and the media. First is the newly courageous judiciary, pushed by an activist lawyers’ movement. Elite legal eagles, who could not spend five minutes outside an air conditioned car, put on their black jackets, marched in the summer heat for hours, day after day and achieved the restoration of the chief justice, who had been “suspended” by the military chief and president. All parties are using the courts, notices, references, suo moto back and forth. A senior past member of Bhutto’s party has filed suit against the “deal.” The military-led government itself is filing references, and testifying in court.
While much of this may be window dressing, its effect is cumulative as it is being covered by 24-hour media channels and watched by the public with avid interest. The media is covering everything, even the cover-ups and the crackdowns as they are happening.
What makes the return of Bhutto so interesting to us in the United States is that we have not yet been able to elect the first female president and Pakistan might end up being led by a woman three times, albeit the same woman. It is also a last resort for America to encourage the ultimate power sharing deal of all the secular elements in Pakistan, hoping that they can achieve what the “war on terror” has not—an end to Islamic militancy. The challenge to Bhutto and the other deal-makers is how to ensure that their mutual amnesties do not discredit them even more in the eyes of an already wary and jaded public, but lead to an effective and transparent government. |
