Pakistan, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, sacked the elected government of Benazir Bhutto, a
"Nambardar" convention was held in Lahore, the capital of
Punjab, Pakistan's largest province.
AHMAD SHUJA
A "NAMBARDAR" or a village
chief, along with the "Patwari" - the lowest level of the bureaucracy - is the most important person in a village in this part of the world, and there is a popular saying that a Punjabi votes as his or her Nambardar or Patwari tells them. In this case, the right-wing caretaker government in Punjab rewarded each of the Nambardars with twelve and a half acres of fertile land as an advance payment for helping the government in the forthcoming elections.
This was only one of the measures taken by the army-backed non-elected government to win the elections called by President Khan after Bhutto's government was dismissed on August 6. Bhutto was accused of among other things, corruption and nepotism.
Pious and honest dictators
Almost all the civilian prime m isters in Pakistan, from Khawja N imuddin to Benazir, including ine hand-picked puppet of dictator Ziaul-Haq, Mohamad Khan Jajejo, were dismissed on similar charges. Army dictators, on the other hand, being so pious and honest, die peacefully in retirement if they are not blown to pieces. The army remains above any sort of criticism.
Just 23 months ago, Benazir Bhutto swept into power as a heroine, the daughter undoing the wrong done to her father and her family. She had seen her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the country's only democratically elected prime minister, deposed by an army general, Zia-ul-Haq, and 12 then imprisoned and executed. She spent a lot of time in prison or under house arrest and years in exile. One of her brothers died in mysterious circumstances in France, probably poisoned by Zia's agents, and another lives in exile in Syria, accused of being the leader of a so-called terrorist organization - AlZufigar. After Zia's death in a plane crash, Benazir won the elections become the youngest head of state in the world, and the only woman in a Muslim country to hold such an office. To many it looked like the fairy-tale ending. But soon it became clear that she was caught in the vicious circle of Pakistani politics. The fairy tale turned into Greek tragedy.
First there were the religious leaders, the Mullahs. For them the election of a woman as head of state was "unIslamic". The fact is that they, along with big business, had done well under Zia's dictatorship, and their dream of making Pakistan an "Islamic" country had nearly come true. For them Benazir represented the forces of secularism, the Devil himself.
Pakistan, like Ulster, has a fundamental problem, the reason or unreason for its very existence. Created out of the Indian sub-continent in 1947, at the end of the British raj, it is a living proof of a false idea — that religious ideology can be the foundation of a state and can overcome all other problems.
The rationale for Pakistan's existence was that Muslims could not survive in to form Bangladesh, the whole ideological basis of Pakistan disintegrated. Religion could not unite the people and indeed, sectarian differences if anything, the among the Muslims of Pakistan have sharpened.
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto tried to provide
Pakistan with a different ideology — namely Islamic Socialism. The Mullahs thought this a contradiction in terms,
"socialism being secular and having thus no relation to Islam". Zia tried to realize the fundamentalist dream by imposing strict Islamic laws on the people of Pakistan. Barbaric punishments were inflicted on common criminals as well as thousands of political opponents. This period was surely the darkest in Pakistan's hardly radiant history.
Benazir Bhutto's terrible mistakes
After coming to power, Benazir made some terrible mistakes. The list is long. A few examples will do.
One of her biggest and most fatal mistakes was to expect the army to change its behaviour. She went so far as to award the army generals medals for being the
"saviours of democracy".
She let Zia's thugs go unpunished. They continued to thrive on the loot they had accumulated during the tyrant's years in power. They had the resources and power of Pakistan's largest province, Punjab, at hand to destabilize the central govern-
On the other hand, the ordinary people of her own Pakistan People's Party (PPP), who had suffered imprisonment and torture in Zia's jails, were left to rot. She called it the "no revenge" policy.
It proved to be the politics of suicide. Now, she regrets that the were allowed to unpunished.
She made many promises which she knew she would not keep. On the positive side, she released all thousands of death sentences to life imprisonment, lifted the ban on trade unions and student activities, increased the education budget by 70% and guaranteed the right of self-expression, freedom of speech and so on.
On the other hand, she did nothing to abolish the so-called
"Islamic laws" that discriminate against women, hence losing the one constituency that should have been behind her 100%. Hundreds of thousands of people who voted for Benazir out of respect for her courage noticed a change in their
finance politicians to look after their Interests in the national parilament and provincial assemblies. Now some of them have decided to get elected themselves. This is likely to be a source of tension between the
American administration and the new Pakistani government. *
"princess". Beautifully dressed, confident, with a touch of arrogance, she began to look the feudal lady, treating the country as a family estate, rather than the representative of the poor masses she had seemed to be. This, along with the dirty tricks of her numerous enemies, was to play a significant part in the forthcoming events.
President Ghulam Ishag Khan, an armybacked bureaucrat, cleverly picked his moment to dismiss her. The world was busy with the Gulf crisis. The Pakistani army had lost much of its strategic importance because of the stalemate in Afghanistan, and America's warmer relations with the Soviet Union's traditional ally, India. But the Gulf crisis has given the army mafia back their self-confidence. Pakistan has dutifully supplied a few thousand soldiers for Saudi Arabia.
Benazir had refused to help the Afghanistani Mujahedin as the army - and the
CIA — wanted, seeking instead a politirefused to get too deeply involved in the Kashmir conflict (see /V 192). Furthermore she refused to give the army the powers it wanted in her home province of Sind, where bloody sectarian conflicts have cost hundreds of lives. To her credit, although she accepted power with "her hands tied behind her back", she refused to be the poodle of the army and bureaucracy represented by Ishaq Khan.
When Benazir was dismissed and the doubt in anybody's mind that the establishment had decided to dump Benazir and destroy the PPP. As Madiha Lodhi, a prominent Pakistani journalist, observed. "they haven't got rid of her to hand over the power to her once again". To make sure that the election went according to plan, the opposition leader, Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi - once a colleague of
PAKISTAN Benazir's father and now one of her bitterest enemies — was appointed caretaker prime minister.
Parliament and the provincial assemblies were dissolved and Benazir's enemies, old and new, were given power in all provinces. Ministers were appointed for their skills in manipulating and terrorizing the electorate. Benazir was unpopular and only a little rigging would have been enough. But as the campaign gathered momentum, the tide began to turn in her favour.
She is undoubtedly a great fighter, more dangerous in opposition than effective in office. So much so that a special team appointed by the president predicted a neck-and-neck result. The army Central Intelligence Agency reached the same conclusion.
Then a reign of terror began in Sind. Hundreds of PPP activists were arrested, tortured and even killed. Now the dirty tricks department of the main opposition party, the Islami Jamhuri Ithad (IJI - the Islamic Democratic Alliance) a ioint front
The land of generals and bureaucrats
PRESIDENT Ishaq used the eighth amendment to the Pakistani constitution to sack Benazir Bhutto. The amendment was fashioned by the late dictator, General Zia-ul-Hao, In order to Invest in his own hands as much power as possible to use against the people's elected represen-
• Some 41% of Pakistan's budget is eaten up by the armed forces In total, the country spends more than 80% of its money on defence, with administration and servicing debts of some $17bn. It spends 0,57% on health and 1.7% on education (increased by 70% by the recent
PPP government). The literacy rate is 7%.
• Pakistan is the third in line for US ald, behind Israel and Egypt recelving around $300m a year. The ald was recently suspended on the grounds that Pakistan has not come clean on its atomic bomb plans. Pakistan has almost no foreign reserves left. Like other banana republIcs, Pakistan has a massive army that it cannot afford. Hence Its dependence on US ald, International Monetary Fund loans and bakshish (charity) from Saudi Arabia.
• Throughout the period of the "caretaker" government, the central and provincial governments insisted that "no one has been arrested for political reasons." Compare this claim with the statement issued by the
"caretaker" and now elected Chief Minister of Sind, Jam Sadia All, In the first week of September, after he had been installed in office: "All political prisoners will be released within three days and those held on trumped up charges will be released In seven days." • Under the caption "Broken Bones, Burned Bodies", Pakistan's leading dally, Jang, reported on September 13 that 28 members of the
Pakistani Students Federation who had been arrested some time ago for membership in the "al-Zufiqar" organization had been released. Some of them had broken bones and parts of their bodles carried burn marks. They had been fortured by Interrogators in different cells, All were PPP activists of between 15 and 25 years of age, Of 100 students arrested in Sind three were tortured to death.
• According to the London Guardian, some persons suspected of being associated with the drugs mafia have been elected to the new
Pakistanl parlament. The report claims that the drug barons used to of eight of the most reactionary parties, who longed for the good old days of Zia's dictatorship, got into full swing. Newspapers were already, by and large, in their pocket. Those who dared to challenge were severely dealt with. Benazir's "friends" were sacked from the TV.
Some examples of the dirty tricks:
• An IJ leader claimed and was widely quoted that "Benazir has conspired with the Zionists and India to destroy the Pakistani Atomic energy plant."
• She was said to have sent a message through Mazhar Ali Khan, a prominent left wing Pakistani journalist, urging the Indian government to attack Pakistan to save her government"
• When Madiha Lodhi, the editor of a prominent English language paper "Muslim" refused to publish news about Benazir Bhutto that she claimed was a lie, she was asked to resign. She obliged along with some other members of her editorial staff.
• In a public meeting in Lahore some speakers made remarks about her which, according to the London Independent, were so shocking and filthy that "even the trashiest of newspapers will not print them. " It was also being said that she was "pregnant all the time" and had a lover in every port and capital of the world.
The election results came as a shock to everyone. Even her opponents, according to press reports, were embarrassed by their "great success". Although their vote was nearly equal to that of the IJ, at 33%, the PPP only gained 45 seats against the IJ's 105.
There was a surprising thing about this election. It was reported that the turnout was a lot less than in 1988, but the total 13 number of votes counted came to a lot
PAKISTAN / DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
International Viewpoint #196 • December 10, 1990 more than in the previous election. The origins of these hundreds of thousands of extra votes remains a mystery.
According to the London Guardian of October 31, 1990: "After three international reports which gave last week's elections in Pakistan a clean bill of health, a Paris-based human rights group has partly endorsed claims of large-scale rigging made by the PPP leader, Benazir
Dominican Republic challenged the very existence of the
Bhutto.
"The report, by Justice Serge Petit and
Justice Olivier de Baynast of the Interna-
In Haiti, US imperialism faces a different challenge: the tional Federation of Human Rights reinpossible, not to say probable, victory of the priest forces Ms. Bhutto's claims that the election rigging was highly sophisticated
Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the elections scheduled for and that turnout was exaggerated.
December 16 - at least if the elections are allowed to take
"The two justices and two barristers place and there is no massive fraud.
assisting them were the only monitoring teams which appeared to have stayed for the vote counting....
ANDY BROCK AND ARTHUR MAHON
"...in one constituency (the team found that) the number of votes for the winning candidate exceeded the total number of voters.
"The French team also found the delay in the announcement of the results suspicious.....
"[Benazir's] claims of mass rigging appear to be widely believed in Pakistan on both sides of the political fence, largely because the IJI victory was so big.
However, few believe that the rigging would have changed the overall result.".
President distributes the seats
More interesting was a statement by the
Chief Minister of Sind, Jam Sadiq Ali that "Benazir should thank the President for allowing her to win (in her home town) of Larkana."
Thus, it was the President and his henchmen who were "distributing" the seats, and not the people electing their representatives.
Millions of ordinary Pakistanis feel cheated. These elections were an rercise by the Pakistani ruling classes a their
American backers to establish a reactionary regime backed by the military and the bureaucracy — a different formula from the naked military dictatorships of the past.
But will the people accept this travesty lying down? For the first time in the contry's history we have a Punjabi President;
"elected" Punjabi Prime Minister, an
Nawaz Sharif, a protege of Zia's; and the hated Muhajir Qomi movement (the neofascist and openly racist party), detested by Sindhis, is part of the government.
With a bankrupt economy, the intensifying conflict in Kashmir, the weariness of the US administration and the uncertain political climate in India, the sectarian and regional conflicts in Pakistan will
14 intensify to an alarming extent. *
Balanguer regime.
### General strikes confront Balaguer
B ALANGUER'S new electoral
term began on August 16, 1990, two days after a 48 hour general strike called by union and popular organizations had paralyzed the country. The government had just announced a series of austerity measures designed to open the way to the signing of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The army violently suppressed the movement - twelve people were killed, more than 100 wounded and there were about 5,000 arrests.
Only one head of state, Venezuela's president, Carlos Andres Perez, took the trouble of attending Balaguer's inauguration, this latter having won by fraud against his opponent Juan Bosch on May 16. Balaguer resorted to ferocious repression once again in response to a three day general strike on September 26-28. A strike leader in the town of Salude was tortured and then shot by the army. There were at least three deaths and dozens of people wounded by gunshots. If one leaves out the massacre of 200 people during the riots of 1984 - during the presidency of the social democrat Jorge Blanco — the present wave of repression is the most violent since Balaguer's first dictatorial term in power (1966-1978).
The September strike was less successful than that in August, but it was not a complete failure. Almost all urban and rural social layers were affected, surprising most observers. The strike was called by a small minority current, the Collective of Popular Organizations (CPO), which is supported by a front bringing together the small - and for a long time untypical — Dominican Communist Party and some other far left organizations.
The movement's relative success is explained by the massive rejection of the austerity measures of summer 1990, which have sharpened the country's deep economic, political and social crisis. For several months, Balaguer's regime has been effectively levying means of inflation.
The money is needed for the big financial and export bourgeoisie, active above all in tourism and the free trade zones (see article on p. 9), for the ruling camarilla These latter are being undertaken with a view to the arrival of the Pope and a quantity of heads of state in 1992 coming to celebrate the "fifth centenary of the discovery and evangelization of the Ameri-
The government's policy has meant a cruel drop in purchasing power to a level not experienced for decades, the collapse of social services (a few hours of electricity each day, abandoned hospitals, chaos in public transport), a decline in agricultural production and periodic interruptions in supplies of goods as essential as bread,
The crisis took a new turn for the worse in August with the devaluation of the peso, a doubling of petrol prices and a surge in inflation. The Red Cross no longer has the means to carry out tests for Hepatitis B or AIDS, since Balaguer will not give them the funds. Since the start of October nobody dares to admit to having voted for Balaguer and his party, and in the public transport talk is of one thing only — how to get rid of Balaguer.
The regime is only able to hang on for two reasons: the support of the military following orders from Washington -which is at the moment opposed to a coup d'état — and the treachery of the major opposition parties. In exchange for a cata-
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