President Zia faces a problem of unknown dimensions as a result of the Pakistan supreme court’s judgment that political parties are entitled to participate in elections without having to submit themselves to humiliating and crippling conditions. While it is difficult to say how the General will respond to this challenge, it is obvious that he cannot perpetrate the kind of fraud he did in 1985, when he barred political parties from contesting the elections. This cannot but reinforce his reluctance to go in for a fresh poll. Earlier he had to contend with the possibility that the elections might get converted into a referendum on his decision to dismiss the Junejo ministry and dissolve the National Assembly without any good reason. Now he has to accept the additional risk that the Pakistan People’s Party may by itself, or in alliance with other organisation or organisations, sweep the polls. And if President Zia could not live with a prime minister hand-picked by him, it is difficult to expect that he would easily reconcile himself to the possible emergence of a popularly elected head of government. On this reckoning, he must do all in his power to postpone the poll indefinitely.
It is being debated in Pakistan whether the constitution obliges President Zia to hold fresh elections within 90 days of the dissolution of the National Assembly or only to fix the date for them within that period. A majority of the experts are reported to favour the first interpretation. But let us suppose for the sake of argument that the second minority interpretation is valid. What then? It does not help President Zia much. After all, he cannot announce on the 90th day of the Assembly’s dissolution that the elections would be held on a specific date a year or two years later. He would expose himself to ridicule, if the date is much later than six weeks after the announcement. Surely that kind of delay is not good enough for the General. Thus logically only two options are open to him. He can either go ahead with the poll, regardless of its possible consequences, or he can suspend the constitution and place the country under martial law once again. Neither alternative can be pleasant for him: the first involves the risk of dilution and eventual loss of power, and the second, that of loss of credibility in the world, especially in the United States on the support of which depends his survival. It is not necessary for us to enunciate the factors which have persuaded the Reagan administration to back the General to the hilt and ignore even his blatant search for a nuclear weapons capability. We can assume that the administration will continue to be guided by the old calculations. Congress may, however, not be as complaisant as it has been in the new context of the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. This possibility must give President Zia cause for concern, if he is inclined to reimpose martial law.
In theory, a third option is open to the General. He can ask some of his supporters to challenge the validity of the constitution itself, on the ground that it militates against the Shariat which has, in a sense, become the fundamental law of the land under the recent ordinance. But that ‘medicine’ could turn out to be worse than the ‘malady’. For one thing, it would expose to the world the absurdity of the situation in Pakistan whereby the country has two fundamental laws – the constitution and the Shariat. For another, there can be no assurance, especially in the light of its latest judgment in the case of the Political Parties’ Act, that the supreme court would oblige the General. For all he knows, the court might hold the Shariat ordinance to be ultra vires of the constitution. In any event, a quick verdict is unlikely in such a case: the country will meanwhile be thrown into a constitutional purgatory. It is not possible for us to say whether or not the General has rushed the Shariat ordinance in order to use it to get the constitution annulled. But there can be little doubt that an attempt by him to so utilize it involves risks he cannot wish to run.
We in India have, by and large, tended to treat President Zia as an individual who is determined to hold on to power. Recent events have shown that he continues to represent the army top brass and indeed that the pressure to get rid of prime minister Junejo could have come from the other generals. In plain terms, it looks as if, like some other countries, Pakistan too has entered a phase in which a reconciliation between the interests of the people, as represented by political parties in office or out of office, and the army, has become difficult. We shall need to watch developments there with care.