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The king’s party and the danger of riding the tiger

ALL the inherent weaknesses that one thought the ruling Pakistan Muslim League suffered from at the time of its coming into being have started rushing to the surface one by one. Sans any ideological moorings and known as the King’s party for very good reasons, President General Pervez Musharraf understandably, has remained its sole source of political inspiration. And his two offices have so far underpinned the party’s unity and its sustainability.

Most of the PML (Q) members had crossed over to the King’s party either from the PML (N) or the PPP, at the risk of being perpetually branded as turncoats. Therefore, each one of them feels that he/she had done the President a big personal and political favour. In return they expect Musharraf to treat them like political prima donnas. And naturally none of them feels any sense of belonging to the party itself. Their allegiance is only to the person of Musharraf.

The experiment of keeping the office of the party’s president separate from that of the office of the Prime Minister, though democratic in spirit, had rendered the PML almost headless in organisational terms and therefore nothing moves at the party level unless the President himself pulls the strings. It is like captaining a cricket match from the pavilion. But with his own plate overflowing with all kinds of issues needing his immediate attention, Musharraf hardly has the time to monitor the match from over to over.

For guidance the PML members naturally do not look up to either the PM who has no say in the party affairs or to the party chief who has no executive powers to redress their problems. Therefore, if they have any problems they go directly to the President and come back invariably highly gratified. This has further compounded the organisational discipline issue.

The choice of Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain as the party president too was eminently ill advised. Shujaat functions more like a Mafia chief rather than a political party leader. He has come up the political ladder trading favours. So, he feels very uncomfortable in the company of those with whom he has had no such dealings in the past or those who are not susceptible to such transactions. And therefore his ability to command respect in a party, which has only leaders and no workers has, remained grossly limited. The merger of all the PML factions (except the PML-N) with the PML (Q) has also added to the party’s leadership problems.

In the first place the factional leaders who agreed to merge feel that they have as much right to lead the party as Shujaat, if not more. Secondly, it was Musharraf not Shujaat who got them to agree to merge. Therefore, their open reluctance to abide by the party discipline imposed by Shujaat. On the other hand they have never been known to have refused Musharraf’s commands. All this has made it impossible for Shujaat to function as an effective leader. He has not even been able to avert the unending embarrassment of broken quorums in the two Houses, which happen on almost daily basis because his party members do not feel all that motivated to attend what they see to be a dysfunctional parliament. He has so far never held a meeting of the General Council of the party or its Central Working Committee or even that of its Parliamentary Board. He has also failed to provide the party wings in the three smaller provinces the guidance that they require in policy making and in handling political firefight with any degree of moral authority.

For obvious reasons, he has no political foothold in these smaller provinces. And in the Punjab Shujaat draws his strength mainly from his Jat fraternity, which has attained a new political pre-eminence in the province since the emergence Chaudhry brothers on the top of Punjab’s political heap. And he draws his political clout in the province from his cousin Pervaiz Elahi who is the chief executive of the province and also the head of the provincial PML.

But paradoxically, it is now his very power base, the Punjab, which has raised the flag of rebellion. Shunned by the Leagues of the three smaller provinces the Chaudhry brothers have moved rather too hard and too fast to consolidate in the Punjab. In doing so they have stepped on the toes of their coalition partners the Patriots and also pushed most of their self-perceived challengers inside the Party to the wall.

And in order to pre-empt a challenge to their hold at the centre in case of an open rebellion against their leadership from within the party, they have been wooing the MMA openly as they have no confidence either in the MQM or the Patriots because of ideological differences with the two coalition partners. This has drastically curtailed the ruling PML’s ability to turn Musharraf’s vision of Enlightened Moderation into legislative fact.

But the root cause of all the ills that are afflicting the ruling Party is Musharraf himself. Musharraf has been leading the PML from the front since its inception. In recent months he has even been going around the country addressing public meetings asking for votes for PML candidates in the forthcoming Local Bodies elections. But then Musharraf does not seem to fancy the idea of donning a third hat as well.

He seems to have set his heart on acquiring for himself the position of a ‘father figure’ of the nation. That is the reason why perhaps he wants all the political parties in the country, including the PPP as well as the defense forces to accept him as their unchallenged leader. He, however, does not wish to share power with them. He wants to ride the tiger all alone as long as he could. But the question is, would there be anything left on the ground, politically and institution-wise, when this lonely ride of his would come to its logical end?

The writer is a senior journalist based in Islamabad