THOUGH THE international stakes in Pakistan's stability are high, that country's domestic power struggles remain intensely intramural. It is all too easy for foreigners, and even gullible sectors of the Pakistani public, to be fooled by appearances.
A case in point was the high drama yesterday, when twice-removed prime minister Benazir Bhutto declared she would lead a rally of her Pakistan People's Party against General Pervez Musharraf's state of emergency. The world saw soldiers preventing the march by surrounding her house with barbed wire and rounding up her party's activists. The effect was to make Bhutto look like a brave leader of the opposition to military dictatorship.
The reality is less clear-cut.
The parties involved have spoken openly about American sponsorship of a political deal between Musharraf and Bhutto. A complicating factor in their negotiations is that neither one wants to appear to be the pawn or the favorite of Washington.
Consequently, the two sides are fulfilling elements of the deal while insisting they have not been able to come to terms with each other. Musharraf, after all, had corruption charges dropped against Bhutto, enabling her to return from exile. In return, legislators from her Pakistan People's Party allowed Musharraf to be reelected president last month by the outgoing Parliament, despite a constitutional prohibition against one person simultaneously holding the positions of army chief and president.
The elegance of their unacknowledged understanding is that each still holds a card of great value to the other. Musharraf needs Parliament to accept the legitimacy of his election by the previous federal and provincial assemblies. This is a favor Bhutto may eventually be able and willing to grant. And for Bhutto ever to regain the office she covets, Musharraf will have to undo the constitutional ban prohibiting anyone from serving more than two terms.
The fact that Bhutto was allowed to speak on government television yesterday, denying that she has been talking directly to Musharraf and demanding that he end the state of emergency, suggests that the two sides are continuing to coordinate their actions. She is leaving the door open for Musharraf to remain in power; he is protecting her from suicidal assassins while giving her a platform to appear the people's democratic champion.
This is a political shadow play. Many Pakistanis know that Bhutto's family and entourage presided over egregiously corrupt and incompetent governments, and that Musharraf's military cronies have been placed in key business sinecures from which they control a large swath of Pakistan's economy.
Amid all this intrigue, the current prime minister, the apolitical former Citibank executive Shaukat Aziz, has fostered stunning economic growth in the last few years, without the corruption of his predecessors. His stewardship comes much closer to the ideals of competence, transparency, and accountability than to Bhutto's penchant for feudal privilege or Musharraf's for Napoleonic authoritarianism. Whatever the outcome of the Bhutto-Musharraf shadow play, Pakistan needs the kind of good governance it has had from Aziz.
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