Electoral victory for religion

For the first time since independence, Muttahida Majlis-e Amal, or the United Council of Action (UCA), a coalition of six religious parties is set to rule two of Pakistan's strategic provinces along the country’s western border with Afghanistan. The results of the 10 October national poll are expected to cast a long shadow over the country’s already uncertain future. "The victory signifies a fundamental shift in Pakistani politics," Aqil Shah, an analyst with the International Crisis Group (ICG), told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad. " [President Pervez] Musharraf and the military need them [the UCA] so that they will have leeway with the west and get its unconditional support." Pakistani political analysts believe the country’s powerful military establishment might use the newly-emboldened religious parties to soften the mounting pressure from the west to deliver on key issues such as the hunt for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and making concessions to India over the disputed Kashmir region. Liaqat Baloch, a key UCA leader, told IRIN that there was no fundamentalist agenda and that they simply intended to implement the 1973 constitution of Pakistan, which was suspended after President Musharraf assumed power in a bloodless military coup in 1999. "Everybody’s rights are protected under the constitution," he said. Observers believe that this apparent shift from enforcing Shari'ah law to upholding Pakistan’s constitution is significant. "They have adopted all democratic postures to gain power," commented one analyst. The UCA owes its victory to an aggressive anti-American election campaign, promising Pakistanis to close the US military bases in the country if voted to power. "The foreign policy has to change and we will debate that in the parliament," Baloch said. His comments coincide with desperate efforts by various political parties to form a coalition government after the 10 October polls resulted in a hung parliament with no single party in a clear majority to form a government. But, the stunning victory of the UCA in securing some 52 out of the 272 available seats in parliament has given it a kingmaker role. Moreover, with another 78 seats in the provincial legislature, the UCA is set to form provincial governments in the southwestern province of Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The UCA campaigned hard on an anti-American pro-Islamic ticket, capitalising on discontent with the US-led campaign against Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan. Analysts say the UCA owes its success to this firm anti-American stance, particularly in Pakistan’s conservative Pashtun borderlands, where joint Pakistani and US mopping-up operations against Taliban and Al-Qaeda remnants are being conducted. But despite strong ties between the religious parties and the military, the campaign also focused on criticising Musharraf’s unstinting support for the US-led war against terrorism. Relations between Pakistan’s all-powerful military establishment and Islamists have been substantially strengthened over the past two decades - especially during the war in Afghanistan and the separatist militant struggle over Kashmir. But Musharraf's decision to renounce the Taliban - whom his military helped create and sustain - has angered many conservatives in Pakistan, Shah said. Among the major losers in the face of the UCA victory in Balochistan and the NWFP were secular ethnic Pashtun nationalists, who either supported the international community’s intervention in Afghanistan in the wake of 11 September or adopted a neutral attitude towards it. However, Pashtun nationalists reject any such connection, blaming the government for the UCA's triumph. "The Pashtuns in Pakistan are happy with the end of terrorism in Afghanistan, and they support the UN-backed peace process in the country," Abdur Rahim Mandokhel, a leader of the Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PMAP), told IRIN from the southwestern city of Quetta. The party lost out to the UCA in Pashtun-dominated northern Balochistan, as did the Awami National Party, another ethno-nationalist political party, lost to the UCA in its Pashtun heartlands in the NWFP. "Why is there no reaction against pro-American policies in Punjab and Sindh provinces?" Mandokhel asked. NGOs and women expect to bear the major brunt of the UCA's coming to power. "The future is always unknown, but given their past track record, their views do not favour women and NGOs," Jamila Gillani, a human rights activist working with an NGO in the NWFP’s capital, Peshawar, told IRIN. "We fear a Taliban-like attitude." However, Baloch said the UCA was not against women's education and employment. "We will stop the exploitation of women," he said. Even before assuming power the UCA's leaders in the NWFP had declared their intention to initiate separate classes for girls and boys by banning co-education. In at least one of the province's districts where the local government is dominated by the UCA, authorities are set to impose Taliban-like rules such as compelling people to attend prayers. Abdul Hamid Nayyar, an analyst working with the Islamabad-based Sustainable Development Policy Institute, told IRIN that the impact of a UCA government would be limited to the NWFP and Balochistan. "They will try to influence things culturally through media, information and education," he said. Although Musharraf's government has been trying to regularise tens of thousands of madrasahs, or religious schools, some of which have been accused of providing their students with military training to the students, the UCA-dominated government is expected to reverse that move. About one-third, or some 40 million of the 140 million population of Pakistan live below the poverty line on less than one US dollar a day. Any future government is expected to address that too. Nayyar maintained that the clerics' assumption of power might not deter foreign investment in the country if they provide enough stability. "Investment does not necessarily look at the ideology," he observed. Meanwhile, Shah hoped that the responsibilities associated with governance would force the religious parties to change their attitude. "The dictates of office and constraints in incumbency might contain their ambitions," he said. "One would hope that better sense prevails," he added.