The stage is now set

Unless the Supreme Court of Pakistan rules otherwise, General Musharraf has been 8220;elected8221; to a five-year term...

Unless the Supreme Court of Pakistan rules otherwise, General Musharraf has been 8220;elected8221; to a five-year term as Pakistan8217;s president. Now, the only hope for normality returning to Pakistan lies in national reconciliation, which Musharraf has promised and some of Pakistan8217;s major international backers appear to have guaranteed. But Pakistanis, used as they are to political confrontation and polarisation, are having difficulty believing that national reconciliation is possible. Some of Musharraf8217;s supporters and opponents both suspect that it would be business as usual once the dust of the presidential 8220;election8221; settles.

Musharraf has the option of acting like Turkish General Kenan Evren, who took power in a 1980 military coup and tried to reshape Turkey8217;s politics by excluding the major political leaders of the time 8212; Suleyman Demirel, Bulent Ecevit and Necmettin Erbakan 8212; from the political arena. Evren declared himself president after a referendum in 1982 and ruled as a strongman until he realised that his scheme for controlling politics simply was not working. After free and fair parliamentary elections, Evren gradually took a back seat and allowed politics to take its course. First, Demirel returned to the political centre-stage and then Ecevit and Erbakan followed suit. General Evren completed his presidential term and retired to a Turkish Mediterranean resort town where he took up painting and still lives. If Musharraf truly follows Evren8217;s model, Pakistan too could have a transition to democracy.

The first step towards that transition had to be reconciliation between Musharraf8217;s military regime and Benazir Bhutto8217;s Pakistan Peoples Party PPP. After painstaking negotiations lasting several months, Musharraf and the military-intelligence apparatus that keeps him in power finally appears to have reached an agreement with Bhutto.

In return for the government dropping graft charges that have never been proven, members of the PPP did not join the rest of Musharraf8217;s opposition in resigning from the federal and provincial legislatures. The stage is now set for Bhutto8217;s return to Pakistan, and the rejuvenation of the PPP, which is already Pakistan8217;s largest political party.

Musharraf8217;s arrangement with Bhutto involved the promulgation of the National Reconciliation Ordinance NRO that ends corruption prosecutions that have not matured into convictions or confessions after pending for many years, in some cases over a decade. Other elements of the agreement relate to assurances of a free and fair parliamentary election and an end to the ubiquitous role of the military in the political arena.

The NRO is being attacked by two principal groups. On the one hand are Musharraf8217;s supporters and assorted advocates of a clean slate who insist that Bhutto, her husband and other politicians of the 1990s were corrupt and should not be given any quarter. The other group comes from Pakistan8217;s nascent civil society and the media. Their argument is that by opting for a negotiated transition, Bhutto has thwarted a revolutionary transformation they believe was under way to save her skin and her allegedly ill-gotten millions.

There are two major flaws in this line of reasoning. First, given that the cases against Bhutto and her associates were far from proven, it is wrong to claim that these were the PPP leader8217;s major consideration. Second, there is little evidence that the anti-Musharraf campaign that started with the lawyers8217; movement over the chief justice issue could have brought the Musharraf regime down. In situations when the adversary is weak but your side is unable to deliver a decisive blow either, the best strategy is to negotiate. And that is precisely what Bhutto did.

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The PPP has not bargained away its long struggle for democracy and civilian rule and the party8217;s negotiations with General Musharraf could still yield an orderly transition to democracy within Pakistan8217;s constitutional structure. The outcome remains to be seen and should not be prejudged in extreme terms.

The writer is director of Boston University8217;s Center for International Relations