Pakistanis Ask if Civilian Rule Can Last : Martial Law Avoided After Zia’s Death, but Future Is Uncertain

Less than an hour after Pakistani ruler Zia ul-Haq was killed in a plane crash last month, his constitutional successor, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, met with the nation’s military leadership at army headquarters and offered them the government.

Without hesitation, the army chief of staff, Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, refused. There will be no martial law, he told Ishaq Khan.

The next day, the politically powerful chiefs of the nation’s four provinces, all handpicked by Zia, also visited Beg. They, too, invited the general to declare martial law. Again, Beg refused.

Later, in a speech to most of the army officer corps, Beg made it clear to a concerned nation that, perhaps for the first time in its history, Pakistan’s armed forces have no desire or interest in taking over.

‘Found Its Moorings’

“The nation has found its moorings,” Beg declared in a speech that several Pakistani analysts later described as “revolutionary.” “What it needs at the moment is a positive and an objective leadership to guide it to its coveted goals.”

Beg’s speech was something of a double-edged sword: He made it clear that the military expects “clean, unquarrelsome” political leaders. And most analysts say the 13-member ruling emergency council of civilian and military leaders that Ishaq Khan created to run the country really amounts to “soft martial law.”

Still, no one questions that, for the first time in nearly two decades, presidential succession in Pakistan was constitutional.

And yet, despite all reassurances, the principal question in the minds of most Pakistanis is: How long can it last?

The question is natural in a country that has spent 30 of its 41 years under some form of military rule. Interviews with dozens of Western and Pakistani analysts and political leaders from the ruling and opposition parties indicate that whether Gen. Beg will place Pakistan under military control again is fundamentally a political matter.

When the shock of Zia’s sudden death wore off in the capital, it quickly became clear that, aside from Beg and Ishaq Khan, Pakistan’s longest-serving military ruler had left behind no political heirs.

The closest thing to a ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League, emerged hopelessly divided after a series of marathon meetings in Islamabad. The opposition, led by Benazir Bhutto, was left without its principal campaign issue in November’s scheduled elections--”Dump Zia.”

Although some analysts said that Bhutto still may benefit from Zia’s death by campaigning against the dictatorial system that he created, the armed forces remain wary of the daughter of a man Zia and his military overthrew and later ordered executed.

And it is in that political vacuum that many fear martial law is still a strong possibility in Pakistan.

Left Country in Turmoil

“Zia came to power in a turmoil, and he’s left the country in a turmoil,” said Rana Naeem Mahmud Khan, a Lahore-based politician who served in an elected Cabinet that Zia fired last May.

Although Zia seized power in a military coup in 1977 and kept the nation under martial law for eight years, he had been showing signs of moving toward democracy in recent years. He allowed the formation of a Parliament during elections held in 1985. Subsequently, four provincial assemblies were elected, as were local officials.

But on May 29, Zia unilaterally dismissed all of the elected bodies. In a move that most analysts said was meant to protect the armed forces from political scrutiny or interference, he also fired his Cabinet, among them his chosen prime minister, Mohammed Khan Junejo.

During his three-year tenure, Junejo had built the Muslim League into a budding ruling party, and political observers had praised his increasingly independent stand on many politically sensitive issues, especially the role and accountability of the armed forces, as a step toward democracy.

After his ouster, though, the ruling party was instantly divided. One faction supported Junejo; the other backed Zia’s handpicked provincial chief ministers, who were trying to rebuild the league without Junejo and his inner circle as Zia’s ruling party.

The key to the November balloting will come in the next few weeks, when the Pakistan Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether candidates contesting the legislative elections will be permitted to run on a political party basis or be forced to run as individuals.

Party-based elections clearly would favor Bhutto’s opposition Pakistan People’s Party, which traditionally has a strong grass-roots party organization.

Such a decision could pave the way for Bhutto’s ascendancy to the post of prime minister, which the diplomat said “would make the army very, very nervous.”

Bhutto, 35, who spent many years under house arrest and in exile after Zia ordered the execution of her father, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, has tried hard in recent speeches and public comments to court the armed forces. But political experts said her efforts have fallen far short.

“Zia ul-Haq indoctrinated all of his officers into believing that if Benazir comes to power, she will curtail the powers of the armed forces, their strength and their armaments,” said Iqbal Ahmed Khan, secretary general of the Muslim League and a former Zia Cabinet minister.

And yet, Ahmed Khan added, now that the Muslim League is split, Bhutto’s party is almost certain to win at least 140 of the 237 seats in the National Assembly, a clear majority that would place her firmly in the prime minister’s seat.

“This is the paradox that has left the country with so much uncertainty and fear,” Ahmed Khan said. “The armed forces are not prepared to accept Benazir Bhutto. And if the Muslim League is not united, I am just afraid they (the army) may take steps to keep her from coming to power. And, yes, that means martial law.”