Pakistan Votes Itself a Test : Given a Chance, Bhutto Can Ensure Parliamentary Democracy

With elections for a national assembly on Nov. 16 and for provincial assemblies on Nov. 19, Pakistan has taken a first, but important, step toward the restoration of democratic government. There are, however, immediate crucial moves that must follow if decision-making is to be taken out of the hands of a powerful president and transferred to a prime minister and cabinet supported by a representative assembly. Not the least of these steps is the designation by acting President Ghulam Ishaq Khan of the leader of the largest party in the new assembly, Benazir Bhutto of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), as the person to attempt to form a government.

Bhutto, the 35-year-old Oxford- and Radcliffe-educated daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, saw her party win 92 seats of the 205 contested on Nov. 16. The PPP holds a margin of 38 seats over the hastily formed Islamic Democratic Alliance, a group principally composed of two rival factions of the Pakistan Muslim League. One faction was headed by Mohammad Khan Junejo, the prime minister who on May 29 was dismissed along with his cabinet and the national and provincial assemblies by the late president, Gen. Zia ul-Haq. Zia was killed in an as-yet-unexplained air crash in August. The second faction is dedicated to a continuation of the “Zia system.” Besides the 54 seats of the alliance, the new assembly includes 59 independents and members of smaller parties. Another 32 members are still to be elected, including 10 representing non-Muslim minorities and 20 indirectly elected women members. The total assembly will be 237, of which a majority is 119.

The PPP has supported a return to parliamentary democracy. It renounced the socialist platform of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and particularly has disavowed any insistence that the army that overthrew the elder Bhutto under Zia’s leadership be “punished.” More specifically the party has stated that it will not attempt to avenge the execution of Bhutto in 1979; in effect, the blood feud between the Bhuttos and Zia ended with the plane crash of Aug. 17. The army may have signaled the end of any fear of retaliation when Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, who succeeded Zia as chief of staff of the army, congratulated Benazir Bhutto on her party’s success last weekend.

The PPP also espoused the platform of the Women’s Action Forum. Chief among the forum’s demands is that any laws that might limit the rights of women be repealed. If the forum’s wishes are followed, the legislature’s confirmation of the sharia ordinance decreed by Zia in June would be defeated. That ordinance would make the sharia (Islamic law) the base of all Pakistani law and would be detrimental to women’s rights.

Bhutto has also declared the importance of the special U.S.-Pakistani ties. As the Afghan war winds down with the withdrawal of Soviet troops, it seems likely that the United States will look at four longstanding issues with respect to Pakistan: representative government, human rights, the exporting of narcotics and the development of nuclear weapons. Bhutto has indicated her opposition to the nuclear-weapons program that was begun by her father and continued by Zia. With increasing drug addiction in Pakistan, it can be expected that any government will work to curtail the producing and exporting of opium and its derivatives. Human-rights issues center on those who were jailed under Zia’s martial-law regulations, and the speedy conclusion of these cases inthe courts is predictable. The restoration of representative government is now in the hands of acting President Ishaq Khan.

The three months since Zia’s death have seen the beginning of the dismantling of his system. Part of this has been done by the acting president and his advisers, especially the holding of elections generally perceived as being free and fair. Much more has been done by the Supreme Court in several key decisions: It voided Zia’s “partyless” election program and replaced it with one contested by recognized parties, it ruled unconstitutional the law requiring registration of political parties (the PPP has refused to register), and it declared Zia’s dissolution of the assemblies as a step beyond his constitutional powers. The courts have shown remarkable independence, and the administration and the military have accepted their decisions.

Much more will be expected from the newly elected bodies, including a change of the locus of power from the presidency to the prime minister, the cabinet and the legislature. But all of this will take time, since any new government will probably lack the two-thirds majority required for immediate constitutional change.

The next step should be to quickly name Bhutto as prime minister-designate and permit her to try to form a government. To fail to designate her would be to invite international criticism of the present administration and, more seriously, expose Pakistan to internal demonstrations and violence, which did not occur during the election campaign.

In the end, the legacy of Zia ul-Haq, the military man who ruled Pakistan for 11 years, could, in a strange twist of fate, be democracy--something that has been absent from Pakistan for much of its 40 years of independence.