Daily Times

The big event in the coming days is going to be Benazir Bhutto’s public meeting at Rawalpindi despite the latest suicide-bombing there. She says she will forgo a rally but will definitely address a meeting and will expect the government to provide her all the protection she needs against terrorism. Threats of terrorism have increased since October 18 when she was targeted in Karachi with a hostile Sindh chief minister saying unkind things about her. In Rawalpindi, she will in the bailiwick of the Punjab chief minister who has been bad-mouthing her, and against whom she has written a letter to President General Pervez Musharraf.
In Sindh, the outgoing Chief Minister Arbab Ghulam Raheem is sitting on top of a predominantly PPP vote-bank in the countryside while the custodian of the urban vote, MQM, is sliding into an ideological alignment with the PPP against terrorism. Hence, the bragging of the Arbab from Tharparkar can be set aside as merely the last hurrah of a potentate in the old Sindhi-versus-Sindhi tradition of political feuding. But in Punjab, the PPP is faced with a different political landscape. Since the exit of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the Punjab has been pressured by the establishment to disengage from the PPP and, if the polls are any indication, the province is ready to be carved up by the PMLN and PMLQ, with only a southern slice going to the PPP.
The factor of Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi’s successful incumbency and control over the province through the local governments system should not be underestimated. The party-less local system in place allows the head of the provincial government to discriminate against nazims he doesn’t like without being accused of being discriminatory on the basis of party politics. Mr Elahi also knows that south Punjab is politically footloose, so he is concentrating his efforts there too. His position is fairly strong but he fears two developments: a strong comeback at the hustings by the PPP and the weight of the PMLN among the electorate as a party that made no “deals”. There is, therefore, some talk in the ruling party in Islamabad that in Punjab the PMLQ should seek an “understanding” with the PMLN and Jamaat-e Islami since all the three eat from the same manger of votes, so to speak. This is the anti-PPP vote that the Punjab CM will have to contest while carrying the blemish of “national reconciliation” that the CM is at pains to disavow. But Nawaz Sharif is not likely to lend Shahbaz Sharif to Mr Elahi and the “understanding” is more likely to be between the PMLN and MMA rather than between the PMLN and PMLQ. This will split the PML vote-bank and help the PPP.
Meanwhile, the PPP is obviously thinking hard about how to win Punjab. Makhdum Amin Fahim, chairman of the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) and PPP leader, said in Lahore Tuesday that his party would consider electoral “adjustment” with members of the ARD. Another PPP leader admitted that “there were some districts in Punjab where the party position was not as strong as in other areas”. The PPP has in mind the small parties of the ARD and not the PMLN with whom the earlier coming together on the Charter of Democracy was not greatly appreciated by the rank and file on both sides honed on enmity on election day. While the PPP and the PMLN have kept their peace by and large — barring the rhetoric on the “deal” and “national reconciliation” — any cooperation between them at the grassroots level is not likely. In fact, PMLN leaders like Mr Saad Rafiq could actually be irked by Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi’s sharp-tongued anti-PPP rhetoric as a more successful electoral gambit.
Is Punjab the oyster waiting for Ms Bhutto to come and open with her sword? There is no doubt that she would like to be given a free campaigning hand in Punjab so that she can revive the historic PPP support among usually moderate Punjabis. Indeed, given her liberal line and anti-terrorist stance, she was most suited to be persuasive in Punjab after aligning with the ruling party in the province on the basis of her “deal” with President Musharraf — a deal negotiated by the presidential emissaries with virtually no input from the PMLQ top leaders. Yet there are leaders like the minister for parliamentary affairs, Dr Sher Afgan Niazi, who regret the heating up of the anti-PPP feeling in his party. On the PPP side, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, appearing on a TV channel Tuesday, clearly expressed mild reservations about accusations being traded between the parties to the “deal”.
Pundits are already predicting that the coming elections will produce a hung parliament, meaning that politicians that hate each other will have to form a coalition to rule Pakistan. From the way he has behaved, President Musharraf would like that to happen so that he can be the pivot on which the new system will revolve. The prediction also is that the PPP will improve its standing in Punjab, but that will happen if Ms Bhutto is allowed to campaign in the province freely, which will hopefully happen when the current CM bows out and a caretaker government takes over later this month. *

Hand behind Rawalpindi suicide-bombing

The suicide bomber, who struck Rawalpindi
less than a kilometre away from President Pervez Musharraf’s camp office and in front of CJCSC General Tariq Majeed, killed three policemen belonging to a picket of security staff of the general. A senior police officer on the spot triumphantly declared to a TV channel that his department had three-layered security for the president and the suicide bomber had been intercepted at the first picket. At the time of the explosion, the president was in his camp office meeting his top security officers. This was surely an attempt to get at him or at General Majeed, whose troops stormed the Lal Masjid earlier this year.
The Interior Ministry says the suicide bombing had nothing to do with the Lal Masjid affair and the ongoing Fazlullah affair in Swat. We have no way of knowing how the ministry has come to this conclusion, especially as we know that one earlier attempt on the life of the president through the targeting of his plane from a house in Rawalpindi with an anti-aircraft gun was linked to Lal Masjid, and Lal Masjid was clearly linked to Fazlullah in Swat. *