Musharraf's triumph

As expected, President Pervez Musharraf bagged almost all the votes that were cast in the presidential election held on October 6. According to unofficial results, he polled 671 votes from an electoral college of 1170, with his rival former Justice Wajihuddin Ahmad getting only eight votes.
His other rival, PPP's Makhdoom Amin Faheem, had opted out of the race in the wake of his party's eleventh hour decision to boycott the presidential election. The results by and large matched the party positions in the parliament and provincial assemblies in recent weeks, suggesting that maintaining status quo was the name of the game during the interregnum between the election held last Saturday and the verdict of the Supreme Court about the legitimacy of the Musharraf's candidature likely to come later this month.
But, even when the government was certain to win hands down, it did take extra pains to ensure that its tally remained intact: so much so that it secured production of ex-minister Engineer Jamil Qureshi, who was in jail on a murder charge - in sharp contrast to the fact that Speaker Amir Hussain never let opposition's incarcerated leader Makhdoom Javed Hashmi got produced in the National Assembly. Another surprise voter was Aalia Malik, who ever since her marriage with Federal Minister Yar Mohammad Rind, had gone missing from the parliament. On Saturday, she turned up, covered in burqa, to vote for General Musharraf.
Is this a Pyrrhic victory for President Musharraf? To the people opposed to him certainly it is for several reasons. From the legal point of view, he has yet to get a clean bill, for his candidature has been challenged by his opponents in the Supreme Court, which did allow the election to proceed as scheduled but outlawed notification of its result till it completes examination of all legal and constitutional aspects of the petitioners' case.
If the court clears his candidature, he will naturally bounce back with much greater confidence, but what if his eligibility is not upheld by the apex court? From the political point of view, the election may remain controversial as long as Pervez Musharraf is the head of state. How will the political parties, whose members have resigned from the assemblies only to subvert Musharraf's re-election, accept him as President? Given the government's failures on many fronts and erosion of its popularity, their ability to influence the country's political scenario their way is bound to increase.
Of course, of late the PPP has come to nurture some love for the Musharraf regime, but it is not yet ready, at least till the general elections, to openly confess this change of heart. In fact, there is no guarantee that the national reconciliation ordinance, the only notable outcome of the 'deal', between the two, will clear the way for a rapprochement between Benazir Bhutto and President Musharraf.
In any event, it is the rejection of President Musharraf's bid for re-election by a section of the civil society led by the legal fraternity a badly mauled media that is going to be the ugliest albatross around the government's neck. This segment of the society is dominated by 'transformists' as opposed to 'transitionists'. It established its clout by launching a successful movement for the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, and then by securing the release of scores of missing persons held by the agencies and return of Nawaz Sharif. Now it is leading the charge against Pervez Musharraf's re-election.
It fielded one of its most revered members - former Justice Wajihuddin Ahmad, as its candidate in the presidential election, knowing full well that he had no chance. Will the lawyers quietly accept the election of President Musharraf for another term? Probably not. On the day of election, it was the All Parties Democratic Movement that gave the shutters-down strike call, but the lawyers alone observed it with full commitment, incurring the wrath of Peshawar administration.
The fact is that the world has moved quite a distance from the Westminster style of number-centred parliamentary democracy. The government and the opposition are the two wheels of the state chariot that cannot move forward and only when this axiomatic principle is recognised and faithfully respected by both the government and the opposition, will there be a harmonious transition to complete democracy and a progressive, peaceful polity with a well-defined national purpose.