Political and social fragmentation

The first administration of Benazir Bhutto

Following Zia’s death and under the prevailing law of succession, the chairman of the Senate, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, a longtime civil servant, became acting president. His first official act was to declare that the elections scheduled for November 1988 would be held as planned. The election results revealed that Benazir Bhutto’s PPP had won somewhat less than half the seats in the legislature. One-fourth went to the Islamic Democratic Alliance (which claimed to represent the policies of the late general), and the remaining seats were won by independents and candidates from a number of lesser parties. Bhutto’s party did well in Sind and the North-West Frontier Province, where it was able to form the provincial governments. However, the Punjab was won by the Islamic Democratic Alliance (Islami Jamhoori Itihad [IJI]), led by Nawaz Sharif, a Punjabi businessman, who became the province’s chief minister.

Bhutto and her PPP had failed to win a mandate from the voters; however, the party had more seats in the national assembly than its nearest rival, and Ishaq Khan chose Bhutto to organize Pakistan’s first civilian administration since the dissolution of her father’s government in 1977. Thus, Ishaq Khan was formally elected president in December, and Benazir Bhutto became Pakistan’s first female prime minister. Moreover, she was the first woman to head a Muslim state.

The new prime minister was in one respect fortunate. Soon after she came to power, the Soviet Union withdrew the last of its forces from Afghanistan. On the other hand, an Afghan communist regime was still in power, and more than three million Afghan refugees remained in Pakistan. In an effort to sustain good relations with the army, which remained deeply committed to a presence in Afghanistan, Bhutto allowed the Pakistani military (now under the command of Gen. Mirza Aslam Baig) to sustain its proxy fight against the communist regime in Kabul. She also was compelled to use the military in a law-and-order campaign in Karachi, where ethnic unrest had continued unabated. Denied success in either operation, Bhutto began to challenge army strategy on the one side and simultaneously lost favour with the attentive Pakistani public on the other. Moreover, with developments in Sind unresolved, Bhutto aggravated the base of her supporters there.

Instead of acknowledging the need to form a coalition government with the IJI, Bhutto tried to force Nawaz Sharif to yield his position as chief minister of the Punjab. Sharif fought back, and Bhutto was confronted with more foes than she could manage. Unable to pass essential legislation, the Bhutto government faced charges of ineptitude and corruption, and demands for her removal were heard throughout the country. In August 1990 President Ishaq Khan could no longer ignore the situation and ruled that the PPP administration had lost the trust of the people. The Bhutto administration was dismissed, and another round of elections was scheduled for October. The PPP lost the contest, with Bhutto arguing that the elections had been rigged against her.

Bhutto was succeeded as prime minister by her Punjabi nemesis, Nawaz Sharif, but it was Ishaq Khan who had wielded extraordinary powers under the amended 1973 constitution (originally pressed by Zia ul-Haq to legitimize his authority). Thus, the viceregal tradition remained the dynamic force in Pakistani politics. Moreover, Bhutto’s earlier dismissal of Lieut. Gen. Hamid Gul—the powerful head of Inter-Service Intelligence and a close associate of President Ishaq Khan—suggested that there was much behind-the-scenes maneuvering that forced the president to act. Therefore, although the election had denied Bhutto’s return to the prime minister’s office, it was the prevailing view that the upper echelon of the Pakistani army had had enough of Bhutto.

The first administration of Nawaz Sharif

Nawaz Sharif rode to power on a wave of anti-PPP sentiment that included that of many disenchanted PPP members. The IJI, whose central core was the revived Punjab Muslim League, now reached out to the parties dominating the politics of the North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan. Moreover, Sharif adopted Zia ul-Haq’s Islamization program as his own, bolstered alliances with the religious parties, and succeeded in getting the National Assembly to approve the Shariat Bill, with its special references to the Qurʾān and Sharīʿah as the law of the land. Like Zia before him, Sharif was able to enlist the support of the Muslim orthodoxy and made its allegiance a central tenet of his rule. But while Sharif was prepared to honour the more devout members of the religious community, he could not ignore his dependency on Pakistanis in the commercial and banking world. In the end, the prime minister could not meet the expectations of his different constituencies, and his coalition crumbled. Sustained civil disobedience, acts of lawlessness, and failed economic policies produced dissatisfaction.

Despite the collapse of the communist regime in Kabul in 1992, conditions in Afghanistan remained unstable, and the Pakistani military sought to restore order by supporting an ultraconservative religious regime—soon known as the Taliban—that came to dominate most of strife-torn Afghanistan. Relations between the prime minister, president, and army remained problematic. Nawaz Sharif had replaced army chief of staff Baig with Gen. Asif Nawaz in 1991; but when Asif Nawaz died suddenly and somewhat mysteriously two years later, Ishaq Khan took it upon himself to appoint Lieut. Gen. Abdul Waheed Kakar his successor, without consulting the prime minister. A struggle ensued between Nawaz Sharif and Ishaq Khan, with Sharif arguing the need to eliminate the viceregal powers of the president.

In April 1993, before Sharif could act, Ishaq Khan struck back. Using his constitutional powers, the president dismissed the Sharif government and again dissolved the national assembly. Sharif appealed to the Supreme Court, claiming the president had acted arbitrarily and contrary to constitutional principle. The court unexpectedly agreed with Sharif’s petition and ruled that the prime minister should be reinstated. Challenged by the unprecedented court action and acknowledging that both Sharif and Ishaq Khan had lost their credibility, the army again intervened and convinced both men that it would be in the country’s interest for them to resign their respective offices in July. With both the presidency and the prime minister’s office vacant, it was the army that ensured a smooth transition to still another caretaker government. Senate chairman Wasim Sajjad assumed the office of president, and Moeen Qureshi, a former World Bank official living in New York City, agreed to act as caretaker prime minister.

The caretaker government of Moeen Qureshi

The Moeen Qureshi administration proved to be a unique experience in the history of Pakistan. With full support from the country’s armed forces, the caretaker prime minister moved quickly to implement reforms that included devaluing the Pakistan rupee (the national currency), exposing corrupt practices in and outside government, and demanding that monies owed the government be paid forthwith. Qureshi cracked down on the granting of public land to politicians, on the failure to pay utility bills, and on loan defaulters, who were estimated to number in the thousands. Insisting on austerity measures and demanding that the country learn to live within its means, his administration was a breath of fresh air in an environment known for profligacy and inefficiency. The prime minister struck a blow against the landed gentry by imposing a temporary levy on agriculture, and he made no secret of his intention to strike at the big absentee landlords and their carefully hidden sources of wealth.

Qureshi’s tactics brought new funds into the Pakistan treasury, but even then they were hardly enough to return the country to solvency. Nevertheless, he persisted, even moving against the drug lords and demanding police reform so that law enforcement could more effectively deal with a deepening national problem of narcotics addiction. However, Qureshi’s reforms also produced problems and a stable of critics. The devaluation of the rupee and the restrictions imposed on the country’s commercial life elevated the price of gasoline, natural gas, and electricity, as well as staple food commodities. Generally speaking, though, the criticism leveled against the caretaker prime minister’s policies emanated from the sidelined politicians who suddenly posed themselves as benefactors of the country’s poorer classes.