In an exclusive interview to Daily Times, the secretary general of the Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), chief of the Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI) and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, has stated that “General Pervez Musharraf should be given safe passage through his re-election as president-in-uniform to save the country from another bout of martial law”. Maulana Fazal thinks that doing this would avoid a repeat of “the East Pakistan tragedy”. This bombshell will numb the opposition leaders who gathered last month in London and have not yet finished berating the PPP for “negotiating” with President Musharraf.The Maulana believes that President Musharraf could impose another martial law if he fails to win political support for his re-election as president-in-uniform. He suspects that support from the international community, particularly the United States, could embolden General Musharraf to go ahead with this plan. So the Maulana doesn’t want history repeated and doesn’t want another “1969-like marital law in the country”. Therefore, after all the harsh words he and his partymen have been using against the PPP, he is now voicing tacit support for a power-sharing deal between Ms Benazir Bhutto and President Musharraf, provided “it is done in all sincerity”.It appears that unlike most clerics in the country, Maulana Rehman is knowledgeable and sensitive to the global winds blowing against Pakistan’s extremists and wants to get out of the line of fire. He says the Abdu Dhabi meeting was backed by the United Kingdom and the United States. His own change of heart — if the entire statement is not tongue-in-cheek — has grown out of his interpretation of events as “nobody from the presidency had so far contacted the MMA in this regard”. He seems to accept as a given ground reality the coming coalition government of the PPP and PML at the centre.Maulana Fazal’s acceptance of the new state of things was also expressed in his warning to any “next” general after General Musharraf trying to grab control of the government, meaning thereby that General Musharraf’s next tenure would be just a one-time exception “for the sake of democracy”. He has protested the unity of the MMA with less conviction, perhaps realising that after his statement it will go the way ARD has in the case of the rift between the PMLN and the PPP. He actually looks forward to cooperating more positively with the Musharraf government in the pacification of Waziristan. A number of things have happened to persuade the Maulana to change his mind and break ranks with the Opposition even more radically than the PPP. He must now be privy to the soundness and inevitability of the Musharraf Plan to re-elect himself in September-October. He must have been reminded that a Supreme Court bench comprising five judges, including the current chief justice, had decided in 2005 that the matter of the president’s re-election was not the task of the Supreme Court and should be decided in Parliament. He must also realise that after he signed the “enabling” Legal Framework Order (LFO) for General Musharraf, he also gave him the right to set aside, through an ordinance, the constitutional hurdle to the continued retention of his dual office.More significantly, Maulana Fazal must have also been convinced that the PPP-Musharraf deal could not be easily derailed because of the strong backing it was receiving from the Pakistan army and the US, the two most powerful players in the game. But above all he must have felt more endangered by his rival within the MMA, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, who is running away with JUI’s votes through a radical agenda, than by the new combination of forces gathering behind President Musharraf. As if echoing him, the PPP MNA Nabeel Gabool told a TV channel Tuesday that Ms Bhutto too was giving General Musharraf a “safe passage” and that she was willing to work once again with the MQM.Maulana Fazlur Rehman must also be less sanguine about the success of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the retention of his control over the Tribal Areas where Al Qaeda and its Taliban ancillaries are emerging as the real power, a situation in which Qazi Hussain Ahmad is more likely to make political inroads than Maulana Fazal can, given the responsibilities of incumbency in the NWFP and Balochistan. As for Balochistan, his party has already showed signs of not being a willing partner of the nationalist movement there. Indeed, the Baloch are cut up by his unwillingness to whole-heartedly side with them on the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti. The question in front of him is: who is more dangerous, General Musharraf or Qazi Hussain Ahmad? In Balochistan, clearly, General Musharraf is a better bet for him.If Maulana Fazlur Rehman joins in, President Musharraf will have more than the two-thirds majority in the National Assembly — PML, 126; PPP (including the Sherpao group), 81; MQM, 17; MMA, 63 in a house of 342 — that he needs to satisfy everyone in his entourage and the Supreme Court. The PML and the PPP plus MQM alone have over 60 percent seats in the National Assembly, which must additionally arouse the Maulana’s highly developed political instincts. This will isolate the PMLN — with 19 seats in the National Assembly — and Qazi Hussain Ahmad with support only from fringe parties and the single-vote charismatic leadership of Imran Khan.The new combination will cause some upset, but not too much. A couple of PPP first and some second-echelon leaders may be put off with their exiled leader for not “cleaving to the people”, but there will be others within the PPP’s competitive fold to readily take their places. The MMA will experience a greater upheaval and, despite Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s assurance, will see a public parting of the ways between him and Qazi Hussain Ahmad. With Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri’s latest statement of exhortation against General Musharraf, the rather thin anti-Musharraf “movement” will be hard put to separate itself from extremism and terrorism.Maulana Fazal is a shrewd, moderate and pragmatic politician. He will play a decisive role in time to come because he will control two provinces of Pakistan which face the greatest threat from extremism and terrorism. *