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Musharraf's farce

Subtlety and understatement are attributes that General Pervez Musharraf obviously detests. Nothing demonstrates this more than the so-called referendum he organised on April 30 to cover himself with the fig leaf of legitimacy. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and foreign media teams observed that the entire exercise was marked by an extremely low turnout, the stuffing of ballot boxes by election officials and multiple voting, with reports of individuals having cast their vote on more than 100 occasions.

Nothing demonstrates the nature of the farce that was enacted on April 30 more than an incident when a foreign media team detected a presiding officer at a polling booth in a government college for women in Rawalpindi quietly stamping ballot papers with "yes" votes. When challenged, she said she had been given no choice by her superiors and stated: "I have been told by the principal to complete 500 votes in my booth." She added that barely 150 voters had turned up and pleaded: "What can we do? We are government servants and have to do our job."

The Pakistani and foreign media have widely reported how General Musharraf misused municipal councillors and governmental machinery in towns and cities from Chakwal and Faisalabad to Lahore and Peshawar to stuff ballot boxes and blatantly rig his referendum. Even overseas Pakistanis who take a keen interest in the affairs of their country were not impressed by the exercise. In Washington, DC, barely 400 out of an estimated 50,000 eligible Pakistanis turned up to vote.

Like in Kargil, Musharraf and his minions went into an exercise of overkill on the referendum. The discredited Election Commission claimed that of the 61.90 million voters in Pakistan, 43.39 million had cast their votes, with 40.02 million endorsing a further five-year term for Musharraf. What was, in effect, being claimed was that 70 per cent of the electorate had voted and that 97.47 per cent of those voted were so enamoured by President Musharraf's sincerity and qualities of head and heart that they wanted him to lead them to new horizons for another five years.

Most independent estimates suggest that despite the use of coercive measures and inducements, barely 10-15 per cent of the voters could be brought around to casting their votes. Musharraf thus demonstrated that he was no different from General Zia in cynically manipulating and rigging bogus referendums. As The New York Times noted: "Few besides General Musharraf and his backers see it [the referendum] as a true endorsement of the leader" and that "the balloting actually diminished General Musharraf's stature". The press within Pakistan and across the world has strongly echoed this view.

All this has not deterred General Musharraf from claiming that he has been chosen by Allah to lead Pakistan. Speaking to correspondents on May 4, he proclaimed: "God has placed me in this position to take these decisions." He has repeatedly asserted that all these efforts were meant to get rid of "sham democracy" and introduce "true", "genuine" and "sustainable" democracy. Apart from a message from Chinese President Jiang Zemin felicitating him on his "victory", Musharraf has faced either silence or criticism for the farce he enacted on April 30. But when asked how his buddy Colin Powell felt about the referendum, he claimed: "I think he [Powell] is a good friend -- I don't think he'll be unhappy. Our friendship is above this."

Musharraf evidently feels reassured that the people who matter in Beijing and Washington support his moves and his continuation in power. This belief was obviously reinforced when just a day prior to his referendum the World Bank announced that it would extend assistance of $1 billion to Pakistan. Musharraf has made it clear that he personally and the army will continue to wield effective power even after elections are held and an elected prime minister assumes office.

Despite the outward bravado, Musharraf knows that the referendum has exposed the chinks in his armour. The world has seen that the emperor has no clothes and that claims that he enjoys massive public support are false. Further, while refusing to annul his referendum, the Supreme Court has held that its verdict has been given in terms of the Provincial Constitutional Order under which the country was being ruled after the military takeover.

The court implied that as the 1973 constitution of Pakistan was currently in abeyance, it would be in a position to rule on the constitutional validity of Musharraf's actions only when the constitution is restored, after the elections to be held in October. Musharraf is, therefore, now in a weak position domestically. With the assistance of political figures like Imran Khan, former president Farooq Leghari and disgruntled Muslim Leaguers, Musharraf will spare no effort to keep Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party and Nawaz Sharief's Pakistan Muslim League from winning the election.

He cannot afford to permit a free and fair election. More importantly, his Punjabi colleagues in the army would not be too pleased with how they were dragged into a none-too-successful or credible political exercise, to help further the political ambitions of their Muhajir chief.

Given his domestic vulnerabilities and his compulsions in aiding the none-too-popular American war against terrorism, with American troops now operating on Pakistani soil, Musharraf is going to become even more dependent on the goodwill of senior army colleagues for political survival. The compulsive hostility of this military establishment to India remains unchanged. The prospects of his fulfilling the promises he made on January 12 about curbing jihadi elements involved in cross-border terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir have further diminished after the referendum.

Musharraf seems to believe that as long as he plays ball with the Americans, he will not face too much heat on his support for cross-border terrorism. All this is happening at a time when there is an unprecedented deployment of the armed forces of the two countries on the international border and the Line of Control in Jammu & Kashmir. The Indian armed forces are now engaged in exercises close to the border. Pakistan has been given advance notification of these exercises.

Even as the Vajpayee government remains engrossed in the recent political setbacks it has suffered assembly elections and on account of the fallout of the carnage in Gujarat, it cannot afford to ignore the implications of General Musharraf's April 30 referendum, or his belief in American support and understanding for his policies. Having deployed its army on the borders and declared that there can be no talks till Pakistan's support for cross-border terrorism ends, how will New Delhi react when cross-border terrorism widens after the Himalayan snows melt?

While the meeting of two Hurriyat leaders with Sardar Qayoom Khan in Dubai with the consent of the governments of India and Pakistan was a positive development, there has been no let-up in Pakistan-sponsored efforts to sabotage and discredit the forthcoming elections in Jammu & Kashmir. The ISI-sponsored United Jihad Council in Muzaffarabad is sparing no effort to compel the cadres of the Hizbul Mujahideen to continue their armed struggle. There is also much that remains to be done domestically to ensure public and political participation, free from fear of the gun in the forthcoming election in J&K. While suggestions for the presence of foreign observers to monitor the election have rightly been rejected, mechanisms need to be devised to credibly establish that the electoral process will be free and fair.

As the winter snows melt in the Himalayas, every effort needs to be made by the international community to persuade Musharraf that the path to peace and prosperity lies in initiatives like those undertaken in Dubai, and not in the mindless pursuit of violence. One sincerely hopes he will pursue this path. But given the prevailing political environment in Pakistan, one cannot rule out the possibility of the summer and autumn months of 2002 becoming "hot" on account of factors other than merely the sunlight. One hopes this will not happen. But it would only be prudent to be prepared.

G Parthasarathy