Benazir Bhutto's demand for the setting up of a 'national government' composed of political parties, the army, and intelligence agencies, has been dismissed by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as well as many observers as 'madness', pure and simple. But if one were to consider the demand dispassionately, there may be 'method' in her 'madness'. Three sets of considerations have prompted Benazir Bhutto to posit a proposal which obviously cuts across the grain of democratic governance, and has been rightly criticized on this basis. First, the political prospects for Benazir and the PPP. Second, the hidden, and sometimes not so hidden, role of the army and the intelligence agencies in our political life. Third, the prospects for the success or failure of the present government, given the profound, multifaceted crisis of the state. Benazir has through this proposal tacitly admitted that the chances of a return to power for her and her party remains a remote possibility in the foreseeable future.

A national government of the type proposed by her, gives her a slim, perhaps the only, chance of being allowed back into the corridors of power, albeit with a considerably reduced status. As for the army and the intelligence agencies, again there is a tacit admission that our democracy is still, to a considerable and crucial extent, held hostage by forces and institutions which in a truly democratic system, should be the creatures of a representative government brought to power through the ballot box, not judges and, arguably, executioners. The proposal to include representatives of these forces and institutions in a national government implies that their open participation and power-sharing in such a governmental construct would mean they would be working with, rather than against, the government of the day. The obvious implication being that elected governments since 1988 have suffered on account of the autonomous judgement on their character and performance arrived at by the army and intelligence agencies. And that their shadow continues to fall, and will continue to fall, on all present and future governments. Far better, therefore, so the logic goes, to have these forces and institutions 'on board' rather than alienated sooner or later because of the failings of our political leaderships and the gravity of the state's crisis, a gravity of increasing concern to the establishment. The present government has failed to retain the confidence reposed in it by the electorate in the February elections. The unraveling of its credibility, in the short space of less than five months, has proceeded at an unprecedented and dizzying pace. Partly this phenomenon is the result of the monumental problems confronting the country, partly because of the government's own sins of omission and commission. Those problems are by now reasonably well known. The state is bankrupt. Hopes for economic recovery have been reposed by this government on the business community, relying on its 'honesty' in the payment of taxes, and its entrepreneurial spirit in the revival of industry and commerce through concessionary defaulted loans repayment, to be further rewarded no doubt by more credit and loans to get the virtually halted wheels of industry turning again.

The accelerated privatization of state owned units is being touted as the solution to our growing debt burden. Quite apart from disquiet about the transparency of the privatization process, a disquiet based on past experience, the concept itself suffers from a fundamental flaw. The sale of the 'family silver' is of necessity a one-time affair. It may temporarily ease our debt servicing burden by retiring the most expensive forms of debt accumulated. But it will not, and cannot, change the fact that Pakistan's precarious finances will continue to be dependent on further debt accumulation to meet our trade deficit, our balance of payments gap, and arguably more debt servicing on the new loans acquired to meet our current expenditure deficit and our development needs. At best, privatization will temporarily postpone the debt crunch, at least until the next time round. The provincial governments' timid imposition of a flat rate agricultural tax instead of taxing agricultural incomes reflects the strained nexus between the bourgeoisie and the big landowners, who are threatening a 'revolt' against these taxes. Were it not for the chorus of voices through the length and breadth of the land demanding that the big landowners should contribute to the exchequer, the present government, despite being led by the scion of arguably the largest industrial house in the country, may have been loath to 'disturb' the repose of the big landowners to even this extent.

Bankruptcy calls forth bitter medicine. However, the capitalist-landowner nexus, as reflected in the PML as much as the PPP, although perhaps with different weightage, ensures that there will be no disturbance of land ownership concentration in the hands of the landed elite. There is therefore no prospect of any deep, thoroughgoing land reforms, perhaps the most crucial ingredient in a revival of agriculture, industry and the economy as a whole. Benazir is hoping that this government, like its predecessor, will crumble under the combined weight of the problems it confronts and its partisan, vested interest governance. This appreciation of a coming political crisis has persuaded Benazir to put in her 'bid' as a necessary ingredient in a national salvation government brew. All these may be Benazir's calculations (I do not subscribe to the conspiracy theory that she has received some 'signal' from somewhere to spout this latest theory). She has further attempted to tick off on the fingers of one hand, by a process of elimination, the options if this government fails to deliver. Her party having been largely discredited, the alternatives boil down to army rule (improbable under the present domestic and international circumstances) or the rise and rise of religious fundamentalism. In short, Benazir's implied admission of the impossibility of throwing up a credible democratic government capable of resolving the state's crisis, points to the fact that Pakistan's historically evolved praetorian state, which has been experimenting with a 'controlled' form of quasi-parliamentary democracy since 1988, is running out of space and room for continuing this strategy. She sees this as opening up a window of opportunity for her return to the political centre stage as part of a collective gathering of all the elements that comprise the ruling elite. But this last hope may be the greatest illusion of all. The political spectrum at present ranges from extreme right to center right. The extreme right is represented by various forms of anti-democratic forces, from the proponents of a harsh dictatorship (whether military or quasi-military) to the religious fundamentalists who seek to alter the polity according to their own interpretation of Islam.

The relatively moderate right is represented by the currently ruling PML. The center right is today the preserve of the PPP (once considered a populist, radical party). What this range of political forces share, lip service to the interests of the people notwithstanding, is the inherent vested interest of one or other faction of the ruling elite (Qazi Hussain Ahmad's attempt to distance himself from the establishment and don populist robes is doomed to failure since the broad masses do not support his party). Whatever section or combination of these forces is brought to power, either through the ballot box (manipulated of course) or other means, they also share one other frightening characteristic. None of them will be able to resolve the crisis of the state. They will therefore, one and all, have nothing to offer the people except more hardship in the form of a heavier burden of taxes and inflation, unemployment, poverty, deprivation and misery. If and when that hardship and misery explodes in their faces in the shape of the people's resistance, their answer will be increased repression, the incremental erosion of legal, basic, fundamental and human rights, and in the ultimate analysis, naked dictatorship.

The above recipe for disaster is considered by many intelligent people in this country as an inevitability. They see no way out. But this is both defeatist and flies in the face of the lessons of history. It is precisely at moments of greatest crisis that countries and societies feel the need for, and throw up, the collective answer to their woes. A heavy responsibility currently devolves on those who chafe under the mountain of our troubles. Pakistan can only be extracted from the grip of the crisis by an alternative politics to that of the failed and bankrupt ruling elite of various shades. Given the hue of the political spectrum at present, what is desperately needed is a filling of the vacuum at the left of centre. A movement which has summed up theoretically the experience of our history, analysed the contours of the present crisis, and produced a political thesis as the alternative to actually existing politics, such a movement is the need of the hour. Since it would seek to fill the vacuum left of centre, it must necessarily put forth a programme for change which removes, root and branch, the corrupt, corroded, iniquitous system that rules in the interests of a moribund elite. It must put at centre stage, the people.

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