Exiled daughter

A month ago Benazir Bhutto was prepa-red to show a bit of tolerance towards the military regime in Pakistan. Musharraf sh-ould be given s...

A month ago Benazir Bhutto was prepa-red to show a bit of tolerance towards the military regime in Pakistan. Musharraf sh-ould be given some time and space, she said then. Now in an interview to this paper from London she says, 8220;I don8217;t think military rule is going to wo-rk8230;.8221; It is not difficult to understand why Bhutto has changed her mind about General Pervez Musharraf so rapidly. In the early days the military coup appeared to her as it did to most people as the outcome of a personal score being settled with Nawaz Sharif: the prime minister tried to sack the army chief who sacked the prime minister instead. There was no indication that Musharraf had an appetite for power or a political plan to go by once he had seized power.

As long as it looked like a temporary arrangement it made sense for opposition party leaders to show they were open-minded about military takeovers. There certainly would have been no point in blotting one8217;s copybook with the general when it was in his power to summon one out ofthe wilderness and open the door to power once again.

Many things have happened in the last few weeks to change what looked like an optimistic scenario for the leader of the Pakistan People8217;s Party. Despite intense international pressure, Musharraf has given no indication that he is about to hand power to civilians any time soon. The agenda for the newly appointed National Security Council is ambitious. In no way does it resemble a holding operation until fresh elections can be called.

Furth-ermore, little time has been lost in cracking down on bank defaulters thus widening the regime8217;s target from Sharif and his family to a whole array of the rich and powerful. If Bhutto imagined she and her husband would escape scrutiny she was clearly mistaken. But having learned the regime is not going to hand power to the opposition on a platter, what next?

Bhutto8217;s reactions to what is going on in Paki-stan provide significant pointers to what strategies her party and others might adopt in the near future. One,she believes the regime is being shored up by an elite 8220;a vast body of intellectual public opinion8221; in the mistaken belief that generals run things better than civilians. Two, she hints at the possibility of political party unity if the military 8220;perpetuates dictatorship8221;.

Three, she refuses to recognise even now how much havoc corruption has played with democracy and public life in Pa-kistan. There is nothing new or surprising about her thinking: identical strategies have been tried on earlier occasions. But populist appeals and the forging of a common political front have only succeeded when international pressure has been applied on the military regime simultaneously. The prospect of all that occurring again is uncertain just now. Much will depend on the performance over the next few months of the military-technocratic administration shaping up in Pakistan. If the bell is tolling for Bh-utto and Sharif who have dominated Pakistani politics for so long, the PPP leader at least does not hear it.From her exile in London she remains unreconstructed, expecting her time to come again and waiting for the general to falter.