General Strike

Even by Pakistan's cynical political standards, last week's selection of a new Prime Minister seemed a sordid affair. This was an arrangement rigged outside Parliament. It was struck in a jail cell, in lengthy telephone calls to exiled politicians wanting a comeback, and with the usual allegations of bribes and threats directed at legislators. None of this offers much hope for the start of President Pervez Musharraf's new brand of what he calls "guided democracy."

This wasn't how Musharraf had planned it. After the Oct. 10 general elections, he hoped to introduce an obedient Parliament that would dress up his dictatorship in civilian clothes. What he got was the opposite: an angry rabble of political enemies in the 342-seat National Assembly. The Pakistan Muslim League, which was to carry out Musharraf's bidding, fell way short of a majority. Suddenly, he had to contend with wrathful, anti-American clergymen and wily old pols from the traditional parties that he had tried to crush. Everybody was itching for a fight.

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The first blow against Musharraf was a long-distance punch from Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister and leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), living in exile in London. Apparently out of spite against the President, Bhutto was prepared to cast aside her moderate, pro-Western views and tell her PPP to back the candidate of the alliance of Islamic parties for Prime Minister, Maulana Fazlur Rehman—a firebrand preacher who wants the U.S. forces kicked out of Pakistani military bases. Having Rehman as Prime Minister would have been tough to explain to Washington, so Musharraf moved fast. His political fixers tried to rope in Bhutto by agreeing to drop corruption charges against her and her jailed husband, Asif Ali Zardari. Under the deal, insiders say, Zardari would have been freed and sent into exile, while Bhutto herself would have been allowed back into Pakistan after two years to resume her political career. In the end, it was easier, and politically cheaper, for Musharraf's party to convince several of Bhutto's assemblymen to switch loyalties.

Even then, Musharraf's candidate for Prime Minister only squeaked through—by a single vote. Mir Zafrullah Khan Jamali, 58, is a tribal chieftain from Baluchistan and a former national field hockey player, who is now expected to wield a big stick against the politicians on the general's behalf. It is unlikely that Jamali, a bearish, jovial man, will be able to do so. He won just 172 of the 329 votes cast. And even that thinnest of margins was suspect: a rule forbidding party defections was waived at Musharraf's behest, so that 10 PPP legislators could switch sides and back the army's man. "Democratic values have failed today," lamented Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the PPP's losing prime ministerial candidate, who claims his supporters were either threatened or offered top government jobs in return for crossing over. These legislators countered that they jumped over altruistically to break the deadlock on choosing a Prime Minister.

The religious parties in Parliament are leading the charge against Musharraf, furious at him for helping the Bush Administration hunt down al-Qaeda terrorists both in Pakistan and next door in Afghanistan. Some Pakistanis, even inside the army, think Musharraf has gone too far, and public resentment against the U.S. is deepening. This fury is channeled through an Islamic group known as the Muttahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the third-biggest faction in Parliament. An example of what's in store for Musharraf—and Washington—occurred last week when MMA chiefs started the parliamentary session with a prayer for Mir Aimal Kasi, who was executed by lethal injection in Virginia on Nov. 14 for assassinating two CIA agents.

Washington may be starting to wonder about Musharraf, too. First came the recent embarrassing revelations that Pakistan, supposedly a close U.S. ally, was secretly helping the North Koreans procure materials to build a nuclear bomb. Then, last week a Lahore court released Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the leader of a banned Islamic militant organization with past links to al-Qaeda, claiming he had been unlawfully detained. Army support for Musharraf may also be slipping: diplomats say MMA leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed may have met with officials of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency before demanding that the President step down as army chief. With such tawdry beginnings, Musharraf's guided democracy may have already lost its way.