Pakistan May Accommodate a Woman’s Leadership More Easily Than a Novice’s

For a country that has labored under military rule for most of its 41-year history, Pakistan’s recent election represented a remarkable achievement. Remarkable, too, was the behavior of the country’s military leaders, who played democracy by the book and did not try to manipulate the elections. The people spoke, and their message seemed to be a wish to avoid dominance by any one party. This presents a problem for Benazir Bhutto, who is expected to be named prime minister today. Although her Pakistan People’s Party won 92 of the 237 seats in the National Assembly, it did not win a mandate. Thus Bhutto’s success as the nation’s leader will depend on her success in building a coalition government.

The voters also were cool to the Islamic Democratic Alliance, which was the late President Zia ul-Haq’s base. Altogether, the Nov. 16 election pointed up the preoccupation of large numbers of Pakistanis with specific issues affecting individual regions and ethnic and linguistic groups--a splintering, not a coming together. One manifestation of this trend has been the rise of small parties, like the Muhajir party in Sind province, representing Muslims who immigrated from India after partition in 1947.

The formation of a coalition government is a daunting task in a country that is badly divided along many lines and has no history of consensus politics. It will require a political leader with exceptional qualities, including the ability to reconcile divergent interests, command the respect of opponents and keep both party loyalists and coalition partners satisfied.

Is Benazir Bhutto such a personality? This is the key question that Pakistan’s president has had to answer as he considered whom to summon to try to form a government. He had to decide whether she can be the kind of compromiser and reconciler that Pakistan’s political situation seems to require. Can she command respect of the armed forces, other powerful political actors and the people as a whole?

In her quest to lead Pakistan, Bhutto suffers from two handicaps: She is a woman in a Muslim society, and she has no political experience in running anything, let alone a government. The latter handicap is the more inhibiting.

Like most other Muslim and Third World nations, Pakistani society is very much male-dominated. However, within the limits set by religion and political attitudes, talented and well-educated Pakistani women have made considerable progress. Many are engaged in productive activities in all walks of life. Thus, being a woman should not, on its own, be an insurmountable barrier to Bhutto’s ambitions.

After all, during the past 20 years there have been other woman prime ministers on the Indian subcontinent, most notably India’s Indira Gandhi. But unlike Gandhi, who from a young age had been schooled in politics and governance at the knee of her father, Pandit Nehru, Benazir Bhutto had no comparable experience. She reportedly had a close relationship with her father, the late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, but she spent most of her formative years abroad. Indira Gandhi had shared in Nehru’s nationalist and anti-colonial efforts and had made her own contribution during India’s struggle for independence. She also had the Congress Party. By contrast, Bhutto lacks all these assets. Her family name is a powerful symbol for many Pakistanis, but it does not command the widespread respect that the name Nehru does in India. Indeed, some Pakistanis associate the Bhutto legacy with a difficult period in the nation’s young life--the loss of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

Nevertheless, during the last several years Bhutto has matured politically. In particular, she has shown a considerable degree of political realism and ability to recognize the facts of political life, both internally and internationally. She has acknowledged the military’s pivotal role in Pakistan’s political life, has backed away from economic socialism and has moderated her party’s stand on some key foreign-policy issues. Thus she now sees value in Pakistan’s alliance with the United States and supports the Afghan resistance, the moujahedeen. The question now is whether she will be able to sell these changes to her supporters and still maintain their enthusiastic support.

Bhutto has one further advantage: There are no other obvious political figures with both the qualities and the popular base of support that are needed to govern Pakistan in these sensitive times. In all, therefore, she should be asked to form a government. She has certainly earned the chance to try her hand at leading and reconciling divisions in Pakistan. Based on her record of overcoming the odds, she may very well surprise everyone with her abilities.

Benazir Bhutto’s success in the elections added momentum to democracy’s course in South Asia; maintaining that momentum will depend largely on her success, or her failure, as Prime Minister Bhutto.