Vision of greener pastures

Vision, fusion and confusion are the buzzwords that can help one comprehend the complexity of the current phase of our national politics. Not too surprisingly, almost all the PPP (Patriots) ministers and members of the assemblies joined the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) on Friday at an elaborate ceremony, jointly presided over by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain.
The merger, apparently done without a quid pro quo, was given some dignity by the prime minister calling it a "fusion". The brand new Muslim Leaguer, Makhdoom Faisal Saleh Hayat, later said it is the "vision" of President General Pervez Musharraf that prompted him to join the PML (Q). Aftab Sherpao, however, decided to stay put in his party, deepening the confusion that envelops the national politics, and is likely to thicken in the run-up to the general elections.
Not only that the development is bizarre in that such senior politicians have abdicated their electoral commitments and consigned their manifestoes to the dustbin, there is a weird ring of déjà vu to it also. Didn't it happen in the past too? A King's Party emerged on the scene whenever the Establishment decided to prolong its dictatorial rule.
We had the Republican Party to rubber-stamp the political ambitions of the bureaucracy-military combine and the Convention Muslim League to consolidate the rule of a military dictator. Then, there was the Nine-Stars Alliance amalgamated by intelligence agencies to keep alive the Zia legacy.
The latest run to the Pakistan Muslim League Secretariat on the Margalla Road is not very different, both in style and purpose. Will it succeed, is, however, a question that cannot be answered straightaway, given the myriad political and other uncertainties infesting the distance between now and the general elections.
One thing is very obvious that the high-decibel noise continuously raised by the leaders and workers of the Pakistan People's Party against President Musharraf and his proteges notwithstanding, Benazir Bhutto has not yet shown her cards. She signed the Alliance for Democracy with Nawaz Sharif but has refused to participate in the All-Parties Conference called by him under the banner of ARD.
Who and what are holding her back? Is it the Americans who want her not to destabilise General Pervez Musharraf at this stage? Then there is Aftab Sherpao, a very shrewd politician, who said he would not join the Pakistan Muslim League (Q). Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain's presumption that Sherpao is inhibited from changing the course by the peculiar composition of his constituency is too outlandish to be accepted. Is it that he is biding time and will rejoin the Benazir-led PPP when the time comes.
The most unpredictable is the scenario that would obtain in the case of religious alliance MMA. Before the last general elections the religious parties could never send more than a dozen members to the parliament. But then in the 2002 elections it bagged some 66 seats in the National Assembly, won nomination for Maulana Fazlur Rehman as leader of the opposition, followed by its active support in the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment.
That not only legitimised the military take-over but also won President Musharraf a new lease both as President and the Chief of Army Staff, authenticating the famously known 'Mullah-military alliance'. Given the MMA's divided stand on the question of resigning from the National Assembly, one would dare predict that by the eve of elections this alliance will have fractured.
Quite likely, some of its parts, particularly Maulana Fazlur Rehman's JUI, may stand in line with the political forces headed by Benazir Bhutto and shepherded by General Pervez Musharraf. If any of the Patriots who are now Leaguers too would be in that line-up is in the realm of conjecture. Unlike Sindh where some stalwarts have secure constituencies, in Punjab the PPP vote bank is at the beck and call of the party leadership and they will not get the PPP votes. Of course there are many a slip between the cup and the lip.