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More about Pakistan’s ‘milestone’ and a preview of its upcoming May 11 elections

zardari

Last weekend, Pakistan’s prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf heralded the completion of the first full government in Pakistan’s history since partition from India and independence in 1947.Pakistan Flag Icon

Today, Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari (pictured above) announced that new elections for Pakistan’s National Assembly (ایوان زیریں پاکستان‎), the lower house of the Majlis-e-Shoora ( مجلس شوریٰ‎)Pakistan’s parliament, will be held on May 11.

Before jumping into an analysis of Pakistan’s upcoming election, let’s first debunk a few myths.

While the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP, پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی‎) deserves some credit in crawling to the five-year finish line and therefore, the end of its term, it’s far from clear that Pakistan has approached anything like a mature democracy, despite Ashraf’s claims that democracy is here to stay for Pakistan. There are reasons to believe that the winner of the May 11 elections might not be as lucky as the previous government, so self-congratulation is quite premature.

Moreover, most decision-making power for truly life-and-death issues lies in the hands of either Pakistan’s military or the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and even then, their power doesn’t extend entirely throughout the entire country — it’s especially weak in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along Pakistan’s northwestern border with Afghanistan.

But it still means that the chief of army staff since 2007 (and director general of the ISI from 2004 to 2007), Ashfaq Kayani (pictured below), is more powerful than Ashraf or even Zardari, even as he’s tried to institute military reforms to reduce the military’s direct role in politics and has pledged to keep the military from interfering in the May elections.  His current term as chief of army staff expires in November 2013.

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The PPP came to power after elections in February 2008, following the end of a nine-year military rule by Pakistani general Pervez Musharraf.  Those elections followed the return and subsequent assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister who had returned to Pakistan in late 2007 following Musharraf’s National Reconciliation Ordinance (which attempted to provide a blanket immunity against former political leaders with respect to corruption) in order to run in the upcoming elections.

Ashraf (pictured below) has been prime minister for less than a year, taking over after a showdown among Pakistan’s Supreme Court, on the one hand, and Zardari and former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gillani, on the other hand, over corruption charges.  Zardari, Pakistan’s president and the Bhutto’s widower, became Pakistan’s president in September 2008, and remains the key power broker within the PPP, though his official power is waning after 2010 constitutional reforms transferred much of the power of the presidency to the prime minister.  Zardari’s term will end in September 2013.

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In his address to Pakistanis on Saturday night, Ashraf admitted that the government has not been able to ‘provide rivers of milk honey,’ but it’s nonetheless attempted to tackle the myriad problems of the predominantly Muslim country of 180 million people, the world’s sixth-most populous.

Those problems include some of the world’s worst corruption (which is very much a bipartisan endeavor in Pakistan), and they include continuous military tension with India, which most recently flared up last month.

Pakistan’s economy has slowed from the Musharraf years, in part due to the abandonment of privatization in favor of a more corporatist state capitalism model championed by Gillani’s government.  More now than ever, relatively weak economic growth plagues Pakistan, even in light of rapid inflation. Furthermore, the PPP government hasn’t made incredible progress on any of the country’s longstanding development issues, including uneven access to water and electricity, widespread poverty, widespread unemployment, illiteracy and poor health care.

That’s all before you come to the issue of global terrorism and Pakistan’s role in harboring some of the world’s most determined Islamic radicals — it was a compound in Abbottabad, remember, where U.S. forces ambushed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

So, no, there’s not much ‘milk and honey’ these days in Pakistan — it ranked as the 13th most failed state in the Fund for Peace’s failed state index in 2012.

Despite a shaky foundation for respecting democratically elected governments, Pakistan features relatively robust political activity that breaks down on a heavily regional basis, and the PPP is far from assured of winning a second consecutive term in office. Continue reading More about Pakistan’s ‘milestone’ and a preview of its upcoming May 11 elections

Khan ‘peace rally’ near Waziristan border has implications for politics in Pakistan and beyond

Imran Khan, the upstart cricket star-turned-politician, led a ‘peace march’ over the weekend, right up to the Waziristan border, in protest of the U.S.-initiated drone attacks designed to target terrorist forces.

Although the march was turned back at the Waziristan border — the Pakistani government literally blocked the road after warning Khan that it could not guarantee the safety of Khan and his entourage — it’s a minor watershed moment for Khan and Pakistani politics, and it marks one of the most high-profile criticisms of what has become an increasingly important element of U.S. ‘Af-Pak’ policy:

The much-publicized rally, which was originally meant to culminate in North Waziristan, ultimately did so in Tank. Amid rousing sloganeering and cheering, Imran Khan delivered his victory speech, thanked his supporters (and the police) and headed back. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief that no untoward incident took place. It’s very rare in Pakistan for a crowd of thousands to have a face-off with law enforcers and avoid a clash. A good precedent was set.

Khan has attacked the drone strikes as a human rights violation and illegal under international law.

Indeed, critics have alleged that the drone program has killed more civilians than intended terrorist targets — and a Stanford/NYU report released in September appears to corroborate that concern.  The U.S. military and the administration of U.S. president Barack Obama, however, claim that the unmanned flights deliver ‘surgical’ strikes against strategic pro-Taliban targets that are destabilizing both Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the U.S. marked the 12th anniversary of its military protest last week — targets that the Pakistani military forces are unwilling or unable to control.

First and foremost, the march has boosted Khan’s exposure even further.  Khan is hoping to make gains in Pakistan’s parliamentary elections expected in February of next year.

Khan, who entered politics in the 1990s, leads the secular, liberal Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice or PTI, پاکستان تحريک), which is currently polling a strong second place nationally, with 24% against 28% for the conservative, rural-based Pakistan Muslim League (N) (اکستان مسلم لیگ ن,  or the PML-N) of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.  Just 14% support the governing center-left, urban-based Pakistan People’s Party (اکستان پیپلز پارٹی, or the PPP).

President Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of the late former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, and current prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf belong to the PPP.  The PPP has been in power since elections in 2008 following the military regime of Pervez Musharraf,  but has recently been bogged down by ever-present corruption accusations, economic malaise and a high-profile constitutional fight over the power of the prime ministerContinue reading Khan ‘peace rally’ near Waziristan border has implications for politics in Pakistan and beyond