Daily Times

If corruption, bad governance, and the end of the charismatic attraction of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s legacy had already led the PPP to lose its political popularity among the masses, why did the non-state actors deem it necessary to unleash their wrath on them instead of letting them face their own natural demise? If the anti-Taliban policies of the ANP had been the real cause of their own downfall, why did then the army chief declare the ‘war on terror’ as our own war when a glaring example of such a policy failure was right in front of him? These and many other issues are extremely mind boggling when we link them with the outcome of the election results. Instead of becoming a party to one or the other notion, let us take an honest and unbiased journey to the events that started unfurling soon after the election campaign began in the country.

Soon after the beginning of the election campaign in Pakistan, it was turned into an ideological campaign between religious and secular forces of the country. The religious lobby derived its first encouragement from the good offices of the Election Commission of Pakistan when the Returning Officers (ROs) scrutinised candidates on the basis of their memory of the Holy Scripture. While this controversy of the RO scrutiny was on, the Taliban issued a warning of security threat to three political parties: PPP, MQM and ANP. Later, Maulana Fazlur Rehman of the JUI-F came out with a declaration that the May 11 election would actually be a direct clash between the secular and religious forces. Long before the actual ‘clash’ would have taken place, the religious forces came into action and started targeting members and supporters of the secular political parties. Two war fronts began functioning simultaneously, one with an ideological task and the other with a task for execution of ideological orders. Within two weeks, from March 30 to April 17, the ANP lost 23 members and supporters of its party, and the MQM lost 12 persons, forcing both the parties to restrict their election campaigns within a secure ambit.

Amidst these target killings and ideological debates between religious and secular lobbies, another opportunity that luckily went in favour of the religious ideologues was the speech of the army chief that he delivered at the Pakistan Military Academy and asserted that “Islam could never be separated from Pakistan.” The jubilation of right wingers went into ecstasy and Mr Ansar Abbasi came out with his quick rejoinder to these views of General Kayani by saying, “The army chief did well to counter the ongoing propaganda campaign against the Islamic Ideology of Pakistan.” To add more dimensions to the general’s statement, Mr Abbasi took one step further and revealed the following challenges that, in his opinion, were faced by the army chief when he assumed power: “…the greater challenge for the incumbent army chief was to get the Pak Army out of the US’s so-called war on terror and to revert to the Pakistan Army’s original motto of ‘Emaan, Taqwa, Jehad Fesabeelillah’.”

Amazed and confused at this sudden and uninterrupted onslaught from all quarters of the right wing religious lobbyists, the secularists went helter-skelter looking for a counter strategy in vain, until the army chief made it publicly known that the war on terror is our own war, and without mincing any words criticised militant groups by saying, “…if a small faction wants to enforce its distorted ideology over the entire nation by taking up arms and for this purpose defies the Constitution of Pakistan and the democratic process and considers all forms of bloodshed justified, then does the fight against this enemy of the state constitute someone else’s war?” General Kayani raised this question in his speech at the Yaum-e-Shuhada ceremony and it was diametrically opposite to the challenges that Mr Abbasi had assigned to General Kayani in his column.

Least interested in this war of words, the militants continued their war of terror to eliminate and terrorise those politicians they considered secularist. Brutal killing of political party members and their supporters in the name of religious ideology became a daily event in the country and within a period from March 27 to May 12, 2013 close to 251 people were killed and 774 injured and the highest among the killed ones were from the ANP (68), MQM (47), JUI-F (36), and Independents (29). The Taliban took the responsibility of using their ‘pious’ hands in targeting 190 persons out of these 1,025 persons and their victims were the activists and supporters of the MQM, JUI-F and ANP. Besides admitting their involvement in this ‘sacred’ task, they continued reiterating their resolve to keep attacking the ANP and other secular parties they had on their list. Targeting the JUI-F, a religious party, was a new entrant on their list of secularists and a pleasant or unpleasant surprise for the secularists. What disappointed the secularists most was the JUI-F’s denial of the Taliban’s claim of targeting them.

From the beginning to the end of the election campaign, target killings of selected political party members went on unabatedly without rousing any noticeable feeling of outrage or concern among most of the social activists and those political parties that were safe from the wrath of the Taliban. No public demonstration or sit-in took place to condemn these well-organised and premeditated killings of political party activists. Feeling frustrated and scared of a constant threat to their lives, an ANP spokesperson and senator stated: “In my province, Imran Khan, Jamaat-e-Islami and JUI-F candidates are continuously holding election rallies. But we cannot come out of our homes due to threats.” Nobody was out there to listen to them while their candidates and supporters remained at the mercy of the terrorists.

To add salt to their wounds, some media personnel and politicians, rather than condemning the killers, made the victims responsible for the miseries they were subjected to. The coalition partners — ANP, PPP and MQM — were questioned as to why they failed to deal with the menace of terrorism during their tenure of power and now that it was knocking at their doors they should accept it as a fait accompli. The JUI-F even rejected the claim that these three political parties were being targeted and stated that some forces, local and international, were after them with a malicious design to make them lose the elections.

When the bloodiest election campaign of Pakistan’s history ended and the election results started pouring onto the TV screens, the ANP was nowhere to be seen in its home constituencies and the PPP was completely wiped out from those areas of Punjab where it used to have its influence. The last but not the least was the blow to the PPP on the Election Day when the son of the former PM Gilani, Ali Haider Gilani, was kidnapped from his own constituency, and to this date, he is untraceable. The third secular party, the MQM, could manage to retain its position in Karachi and Hyderabad but it was not without any losses. From 19 seats in the National Assembly in 2008, it is reduced to 18 seats now and in the Sindh provincial Assembly their strength is reduced from 51 seats in 2008 to 34 in 2013. The war between secular and religious forces has ended in a humiliating defeat of all those secular parties that were condemned and targeted by the Taliban. The comments from think tanks and observers from left and right have now started declaring the defeated parties as victims of their own bad performance. A left wing writer, Amir Mehmood Qureshi, in his column in a national daily on May 15, 2013, made this self-righteous comment on the election results: “We have punished bad governance and rewarded those who have promised to deliver real results.” Faced with unprecedented defeat, loss of over 750 members, and such a degrading media condemnation, Ghulam Ahmed Bilour of the ANP had to at last surrender before his tormentors by congratulating the Taliban on their success and helplessly asking them to stop punishing them now. Neither the Supreme Court nor the army chief, who considers militants as the enemy of the constitution, took notice of this miserable sense of insecurity of a citizen of the country who was recently a minister too. The precedent this bloody election has set is to encourage militancy rather than legitimacy. If this is a good sign for the future, then the army chief will have to reconsider his views on militancy.

The writer is a freelance journalist and researcher. He can be reached at mohammad.nafees@yahoo.com