Tariq Ali, author of several books on the Indian sub-continent, spoke to Marc Renard about the situation.
OW DID the electoral campaign unfold? What was the el of participation and the general atmosphere?
The electoral campaign was rather low key. The situation was as follows. One week before the election campaign, the Supreme Court of Pakistan, very clearly under the directive of the military, insisted that all of the people that went out to vote had to show their identity cards. This meant that in a country where a majority of people still live in the countryside, large parts of the electorate, especially the rural poor and women, would be disenfranchised.
Now this meant that the turn out for the election was very low for Pakistan, it was
40%. In the previous two elections over the last thirty years turn outs have been very high, between eighty and ninety percent.
So the turn out was low.
The second point to be made about the campaign is that the People's Party, the populist party which was the main opposition to the army, in fact moderated many of its demands and, in terms of social and economic content, there was very little to choose from. There was no real class mobilization in that sense, except that the poor, by and large, voted for the Pakistan People's Party (PPP).
The third point that has to made about the election campaign is that the People's Party emerged as the only single political party with support in all four provinces of the country. In the province of Sindh in the southern part of Pakistan, they literally did not allow a single representative of the reactionary fundamentalist parties to win even a single seat. All the traditional landlords of Sindh were voted out of office. So in Sindh, I would say that the mobilization had a nationalist as well as a populist content. This was the Sindhi population voting to put Bhutto's daughter back in power. • What was precisely the content of the electoral campaign of PPP. What were Bhutto's promises?
Look, the campaign was basically deagainst the legacy of the last eleven years — it was voting against fundamentalism, it was voting against Islamic punishment, it was voting to be allowed to breathe once again. I would say that that was the main political content of the campaign, that people wanted a return to democracy. And the PPP did not offer them too much in terms of social content. It is true that one of the planks in the People's Party manifesto was very radical and drastic land reform. But we will see if that is implemented. • Just after the election there were provincial elections. The Islamic Democratic Alliance (IDA) seems to have had better results in these elections?
No, only in the Punjab did it have a better result. In Sindh it didn't win a single seat, in Baluchistan it won some seats, and in the frontier it won some seats. But in the northwest frontier province, the PPP together with the ANP, the Awami National Party, have a majorty and form a government. In Punjab, the situation was more indeterminate. The IDA got more seats as a grouping than the PPP and there they form a government, and that was a big blow for the PPP. But the People's Party claim the reason for this was that there was a lot of chicanery, and corruption and intimidation, or they would have got a majority there. Well, we don't know. We shall see. • Before, Zia and the right were against this kind of multi-party election. What pushed them to change?
Well, what pushed them to change their minds was the fact that the entire leadership of the army was blown up. They had no serious option. They face the danger that in a country where there are very strong national tensions, if they didn't allow a proper election the province of Sindh certainly could fall apart. • After Bhutto's victory, were there negotiations between her and the chief of state and the army to get the prime ministership?
Well, yes, there were intense negotiations, and in these negotiations the army chief played a very major part, as did the United States ambassador, Robin Oakley. In fact if you look at the way Pakistani politics have developed over the last twelve to
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6
December 26, 1988 • #154 International Viewpoint fifteen years, Pakistan emerges very clearly as a neo-colony of the United States in Asia. It is probably one of the few countries in Asia which has that particular relationship with the United States. It is a relationship which the Filipino strong man Marcos had, that sort of relationship.
So the United States ambassador is almost like a senior politician in the country, and they operate like that quite openly now. There is no attempt to conceal this fact. In fact my own feeling is that Pakiprobably have a better chance if it was formerly integrated into the United States as a distant republic, but anyway that is a separate point. So, the negotiations were on Afghanistan and the IMF loan, both of which the previous regime has already been involved in negotiating.
I think that part of the price that Benazir has to pay for being prime minister is that the old foreign minister of General Zia, Yaqub Khan, remains her foreign minister. She was forced to concede to that and I think she was told that she could not change the conditions of the IMF loan. Now, the conditions of the IMF loan to Pakistan are such that if she attempts to push through the demands of the IMF, I think she will face a very rapid rebellion from the people.
So the army and the Americans insisted on these things, but, on the other side, you have the following things: the release of all political prisoners has been ordered, capital punishment has been barred for any political offense, all Pakistani exiles have been given passports to return to the country whenever they choose. The national press trust, which was a government controlled press body that oversaw the majority of the press, is going to be dissolved.
So, on that level some interesting things are happening and the mood of the country is far more relaxed. But I think no one underestimates the scale of the problem. The thing is, people are desperate for her to succeed, because there is no alternative. They know that if she fails it will be back to the uniforms, and that will be very disastrous. So people are just desperate for her to do something, and we shall see... • In general terms, what are the economic problems she has to face?
The economic problems are that the country has got no money. It is living on debt, it is totally in debt, and is mortgaged to the World Bank and the United States. I think that in about two months time, unless the United States gives them a massive loan, they will not even have the money to pay the civil servants. Fifty percent of the country's budget is taken up by the army, so the only way to generate some wealth is to cut the military budget. But that she will not do for fear that it unleashes a military coup. So it is a very difficult situation.
The PPP has pledged, as I said, a drastic land reform in its manifesto. If implemented, this would bring great joy to the peasants throughout the country. It would bring Benazir enormous popularity among the common soldiery, which is overwhelmingly rural in origin. But will some of the powerful landlords who sit happily inside her party agree to such reforms? It is hard enough to be a social democrat in the heartlands of capitalism in Western Europe today, but it is virtually impossible to be a social democrat in the conditions of the third world. • She has to form her government with the Independents, the MQM movement?
...She doesn't have to, she has a majority of her own because of the twenty seats reserved for women, she won eleven... • But it has been said in the international press that the MOM will probably support her party. Who and what are
The MOM - or the Mojahin National Movement — are the children of Muslim refugees who fled from India in 1947 at the time the sub-continent was divided. This particular group has lived mainly in Karachi and they still do not feel that they have been treated well, there have been lots of clashes between them and the local people, so they formed their own organization.
Once they formed their own organization, with very regionalist demands, the net result was that one of the fundamentalist Muslim parties, the Jamaat-e-Islami party, totally lost its influence in Karachi, the biggest city in the country. The MQM won
PAKISTAN most of the seats there, and they are an influential force in Karachi city, but I think they have already said that they are going to collaborate with the new regime and work with it and not against it. That is quite important. • You mentioned at one time that when Benazir came back she threw the old left out. Now that she has gotten rid of the Punjabi protesters, what are the problems in the PPP?
I think that at the moment there are no problems. She has won the election, so the party is united. Some of the old left is outside of the party, for example, as I described in my Guardian article, the leadership of the PPP made a serious tactical error. Benazir decided not to give backing to a local PPP veteran,
Ghulam Hussein, who was on the left of the party. Hussein had publicly disagreed with the softening of the party line vis-à-vis Washington. He was punished by being denied a seat. He stood as an independent in two different constituencies and drew over 80,000 votes
This was more than enough to let in the right-wing
Another mistake was that in the capital of the country Benazir had depended on the former general Tikka Khan, who is not universally popular, to choose the candidates. His choices provoked a virtual insurrection amongst PPP voters. The result was predictable. There was only one successful PPP candidate in Islamabad, and it was not General Tikka. But at the moment the party is very euphoric and happy. The person she has appointed as minister of the interior and of justice is Etzaz Assan, a very highly respected human rights lawyer who was himself arrested eleven times by the previous government. He is a man of principle and it is very significant that he has been put in charge of the interior. It means that he is in charge of the police force, he is in charge of re-writing the constitution, he is in charge of cleaning up the judiciary. So he has got three important positions, and a lot is expected of him. • What can she do against the Islamic laws? And what other initiatives has she taken?
She has already said that all these laws will be repealed, and in her first broadcast declared that all of the rights taken away from women will be restored. There will also be freedom for all trade unions, but given the economic conditions of the coun try, although they will grow, they will have to be careful. When her father was in power he nationalized any industry that sacked workers at one period, but she could not do that now.
One example is at the root of IDA head Nawaz Shari's current hostility to the PP. 77 In the 70s, he was the proprietor of a large
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International Viewpoint #154 • December 26, 1988
PAKISTAN steel foundry. His workers went on strike. He used goons to try and end the strike. The workers appealed to the then prime mınıster of the country, Bhutto, who nationalized the factory. During Zia's rule, it was privatized once again and Sharif became eternally grateful. Pakistani politics can often be as simple and straightforward as that.
I think that the trade unions will find that once they have set themselves up, they will face people who will say if you go on strike, we will close down the factory and go elsewhere. Thus it is the same as elsewhere in Europe, but worse. I don't expect too much in the first year, on that level. • Is there a nucleus yet for a big union?
No, there is no possibility for anything remotely like the PT in Brazil right now. • In one of your previous articles you spoke of the heroin mafia situation...
This is still in place, but I think that they must be very nervous, because I think that this new government will try very hard to get them out. But this is a very difficult problem. Over the past ten years this has totally corroded the country's institutions. Will the heroin mafias and those on their payroll inside the army and the civil service, the police and the political parties simply sit back and allow this lucrative • As far as Afghanistan goes, what has
She has said that she will stand by the Geneva accords. The Geneva accords call
Indian reaction to her election, if you read the Indian press, it has been very very positive. The Indian government has always said that it would rather do business with an elected government than with the Pakistan army. So I think on both sides there is a desire for conciliation and to reach some kind of lasting agreement. • What do you see happening in the next presidential elections?
Well, earlier you asked about concessions. One concession was to keep on the foreign minister, the second concession was not to do anything about the IMF loan that had already been signed and negotiated, and the third concession was that this veteran bureaucrat, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, would be kept on as president.
The position of the Pakistani People's Party is that they are going to back Ishag. In my opinion, it is an unfortunate concession, to put it mildly. Ishaq was a member of the old government, and even when he was a member of Bhutto's cabinet, he was the member of Bhutto's cabinet who was widely reputed to be an agent of InterServices Intelligence. Everything Bhutto's cabinet discussed was reported to the army. He sat in the cabinet that ordered the execution of Bhutto. To have this guy, who has no support or backing in the contry, as president is a very major concession to the United States and to the army. But there will be other candidates.
The most serious candidate who is standing against Ishaq is a man called Nasrullah Khan, who is a bourgeois democrat, one of the leaders of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD). He has said that he is standing against Ishaq, he knows that Ishaq will win, but representatives of democracy have to stand against him. And some of the independents in parliament are backing him, so Ishaq will not be elected unopposed. But the fact that the PPP is forced to support Ishaq is an indication of how weak it is at the moment. • How can we understand Benazir Bhutto's evolution since she returned to the country? First she thought that, with massive support, she could bring down the government, but this proved impossible. How has she changed?
I think the evolution was that she realized that the Americans were running the country totally, and that nothing could be done in Pakistan without the Americans, unless you went for a revolution. She is in any case not a revolutionary, neither ideologically, by temperament, nor politically. So that option was excluded right at the beginning. So for her, the only option was to do a deal with the United States, which • But will that tactic cause her to lose some of her massive support?
Well, that we will see over the next year. The first year is going to be crucial for what will happen to this country. *
INTERNATICNAL for a coalition government in Afghanistan.
They call for non-interference first, and second of all to resolve the problem peace-
MARXISTREVIEW fully. Given Gorbachev's latest speech in
New York, I think she will be very hard put to follow Zia's policy on Afghanistan.
Zia's policy was to put the most recalcitrant wing of Afghan fundamentalism, that is the wing led by Gulpindar Hekmatyar, into power in Kabul. I don't think the new
This special issue contains:
• Why the Fourth International
- Ernest Mandel government in Pakistan will do that, I think they will try and put pressure for a coalition
— Alan Wald government, but probably a coalition government excluding the Peoples Democratic
— Livio Maitan
Party of Afghanistan (PDPA).
- Documents from France and Mexico
• And the aid from Pakistan will probably be diverted from the most reactionary groups?
- Michael Löwy
Yes, I think that is possible. I think there is very little time now left for a Soviet
— Daniel Bensaid and Alain Krivine withdrawal, so I think that will happen.
— Book reviews
• And what is the attitude of the States about that?
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Change is possible now. I don't think too much will change in Washington after Reagan's departure, but it could.
• And as far as India goes?
There, again, I think that all indications
8 show oat she will ndiao Feech look at acecommodation with India. If you look at the
• US intellectuals and Trotskyism
• 1948-1968: balance sheet
• Why we are FI sections
• Internationalism today
• Heirs of May 68
• Contributions to Marxist theory
50 years of the
Fourth International
Ten years
after the founding of Herri
Batasuna NO-ONE DISPUTES the importance of Herri Batasuna (HB), whether in the Basque country itself or within the Spanish state. For supporters of the status quo the problem is one of either coopting HB or forcing it to capitulate.
In order to accomplish this, they use a number of tactics, ranging from harsh condemnations demanding repressive actions, to inviting Herri Batasuna to become part of the institutional political framework. Their objective is clear: HB must be coopted, or cease to exist. JOSE IRIARTE BIKILA
N THE other hand, we want the reverse. We hope that Herri Batasuna stays strong and stays firm. The road to revolution is not straight and narrow, and we need collaboration among all revolutionaries - even those with different ideas. It is very important for us, the Revolutionary Communist League (LKI), to analyze the significance of Herri Batasuna and to learn from this experience.
Herri Batasuna was founded ten years ago. This was during the pre-autonomy period; the constitution of the Spanish state had not yet been approved, the social movements were still active, the labor movement was calling large general strikes, and demonstrated its opposition to repression through its struggle. Above all, discontent was pronounced in most sectors of abertzale (Basque radical nationalist)
Shortly thereafter, during the vote on the constitution, the total of no votes and active abstentions testified to the rejection of the constitution in Euskadi. For a large sector, the ETA seemed to be the vanguard of the resistance. Many people identified with the attacks against the system. However, this social sector was not homogeneous. In a general sense, they were all abertzales (some had been for a long time, others were more recent), but many had differing ideologies and belonged to different parties. In the end, HB drew on different sources: classic nationalism, left nationalist organizations, some groupings coming out of the assembly movement, and activists with many good qualities. In one way or another, all identified with the ETA's struggle.
The origins of Herri Batasuna are found among the organizations making up the which wanted a united, democratic, radical nationalist alternative. In doing this, the Patriotic Socialist Coordination (KAS) filled this broad social sector's need for organizational instruments.
Exposing constitutional autonomy as a fake
Herri Batasuna developed around the rejection of the pre-autonomy and a call for voting against the constitution. It quickly became the major player in the political developments in the Basque country around these two themes. Ultimately, it was the only parliamentary party that denied the constitution's legitimacy in Euskadi (there is no longer any carry over of the negative vote by Euskadiko Ezkerra, and one no longer even mentions the Basque Nationalist Party's abstention), and which exposed the autonomy in the constitution as a false
Just before the status of juridical autonomy was to be put into effect, confronted with the institutions in formation, HB proposed the setting up of the Euskal Herriko Batzarre Nazionala (National Congress of the Basque People, EHBN) hoping it might be able to serve as an organ of dual power. This initiative did not attract a following. The movement was not strong enough, and the project was too vaguely defined.
After a good electoral showing, HB gave a strong push to the mobilizations, setting off general strikes and supporting national delegated assemblies. It was always very respectful of united front struggles, which at this time were called in unity of action with the revolutionaries. HB gave impetus to, and led the fight against repression and the national struggle, and provided a political cover and support for other kinds of
It also denounced the reformist parliamentary game, giving priority to mobilization and the struggle, and decided not to participate in the Basque and Spanish parliaments. Later, it withdrew from the Navarra parliament. This tactic had its