Democracy won't die with Benazir in Pak
By Shashi Tharoor
Weekly Column "Shashi on Sunday" in "The Times of India"
January 06, 2008

Benazir Bhutto has never looked this good. This week has seen the international press posthumously apotheosising the telegenic Pakistani politician. But the widely-expressed view that Benazir epitomised Pakistan’s hopes for democracy, which have now perished with her, seriously overstates both what she represented and the implications of her demise.

The principal consequence of Benazir Bhutto’s death is the setback it has dealt to the US-inspired plan to anoint her, after not-quite free-and-fair elections, as the acceptable civilian face of continuing Musharraf rule. The calculations were clear: Musharraf was a valuable ally of the West against the Islamist threat in the region, but his continuing indefinitely to rule Pakistan as a military dictator was becoming an embarrassment.

The former chief martial law administrator had to doff his uniform - long overdue, since he was three years past the retirement age for any general - and find a credible civilian partner to help make a plausible case for democratisation. Benazir - well-spoken, well-networked in Washington and London, and passionate in her avowals of secular moderation, however self-serving - was the chosen one.

The other exiled civilian ex-prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was none of these things, and having been the victim of General Musharraf’s coup, was considerably less inclined to co-operate with his defenestrator. So, Nawaz was returned to exile in Saudi Arabia when he attempted to come home, and when that ploy did not work (the Saudis having no particular desire to take Benazir’s side over his), was disqualified from running for office on the risible grounds that his attempts as an elected prime minister to prevent a coup against himself amounted to hijacking and terrorism. This left the field free for Benazir to do sufficiently well in the elections to become prime minister of Pakistan for a third time.

Her first two stints had, however, been inglorious. From 1988-90 she had been overawed by the military, whose appointed president duly dismissed her from office on plausible charges of corruption, mainly involving her husband, who had acquired the nickname ‘Mr 10 per cent’.

Her second innings (1993-96) was, if anything, worse: charges of rampant peculation (and administrative adhockery) mounted, even as her avowedly moderate government orchestrated the creation of the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan. This time it was a president of Pakistan from her own party who felt obliged to dismiss her. To assume that a third stint would have been any different requires a leap of faith explicable only by the mounting international anxiety over Musharraf’s fraying rule.

But Benazir’s true merit lay in the absence of plausible alternatives. She was no great democrat - as her will, appointing her husband Asif Zardari to inherit her party, confirms. The Bhuttoist ethos is a uniquely Pakistani combination of aristocratic feudalism and secular populism. To her, democracy was a means to power, not a philosophy of politics.

But the same was true of the other contenders in Pakistan’s political space - the conservative Punjabi bourgeoisie represented by Nawaz Sharif, the moderate pro-militarists grouped around Musharraf, the deeply intolerant Islamists, and the assorted regionalist and particularist parties whose appeal is limited to specific provinces. Musharraf knew that all that elections would ensure was a temporary rearrangement of the balance of forces amongst these diverse elements. But it would enable him to remain in charge as a "civilian" President while portraying his Pakistan - more credibly than heretofore - as the last bastion of democratic moderation in the face of the Islamist menace.

Democrats in India may well believe that the Pakistani people deserve better, but it is difficult to imagine a viable alternative to such a scenario. The central fact of Pakistani politics has always been the power of the military, which has ruled the country for 32 of its 60 years of existence. In other countries, the state has an Army; in Pakistan, the Army has a state.

The military can be found not only in all the key offices of government, but running real estate and import-export ventures, petrol pumps and factories; retired generals head most of the country’s universities and think-tanks. The proportion of national resources devoted to the military is perhaps the highest in the world. Every once in a while a great surge of disillusionment with the generals pours out into the streets and a "democratic" leader is voted into office, but the civilian experiment always ends badly, and the military returns to power, to general relief.

The British political scientist W H Morris-Jones once famously observed that the only political institutions in Pakistan are the coup and the mob. Neither offers propitious grounds for believing that an enduring democracy is around the corner.

The elections that Benazir might have won have now been postponed, but they will take place eventually, because they represent the only safety-valve in the pressure-cooker that Pakistan is today. Her party will benefit from a sympathy vote, but in the absence of a charismatic leader, it will be obliged to come to an accommodation with the generals. Despite widespread anger at Musharraf’s failure to protect Benazir, this may actually be the best outcome for Pakistan.

The Islamists, who have never won more than 10% of the popular vote nationally, may fare even worse in the aftermath of Benazir’s killing; most people assume her killers were religious fundamentalists. The other suspects - Islamist sympathisers in the Pakistani military, of whom there are many in key positions (notably in the Inter-Services Intelligence) - will also be on the defensive in the face of popular fury at Benazir’s murder. The great danger in Pakistan has always lain in the risk of a mullah-military coalition. The death of Benazir has made that less likely for now, and that may remain her most significant legacy.