Making A Difference

Winning This Round

Benazir fails to outwit Abdul Qayyum on his home turf

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Winning This Round
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IT was a smart move by the Muslim Conference's seasoned Prime Minister Abdul Qayyum Khan—he first engineered President Sikander Hayat Khan's resignation and then got him re-elected for another five-year term by the outgoing assembly. Elections to the new Pakistan Occupied Kashmir's (POK) assembly are scheduled for June 30.

Qayyum's action triggered an angry reaction from Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) which argued that it was unethical for an outgoing assembly to elect the president. The POK unit of the PPP filed two petitions, challenging the presidential election on May 22, but the state high court dismissed both the writs. Hours later, Sikander Hayat Khan was elected unopposed by a house of 55 members where Qayyum enjoys an overwhelming majority.

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Earlier, Prime Minister Bhutto, in a desperate bid to find a solution, formed a crisis management committee headed by Naw-abzada Nasarullah Khan to negotiate a deal which could stall the presidential election. Nasarullah Khan, who is chairman of Parliament's Kashmir committee, and other leaders held long meetings with Qayyum on May 21 but failed to persuade him to call off the election.

Prime Minister Bhutto even called a special meeting of her Cabinet to discuss crisis management measures but to no avail. Prime Minister Qayyum and President Sikander were invited to the meeting. Qayyum attended it but Sikander declined to come. The POK Prime Minister was accompanied by Abdul Rashid, acting President and assembly Speaker.

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The federal government tried to convince Qayyum that it wasn't proper to let one assembly elect the President for the second time, especially when general elections were a month away. As an example, Benazir Bhutto even wondered aloud what would be the public reaction if her party decided to re-elect Pakistan President Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari prior to the next elections in 1998.

Qayyum, a shrewd politician, who has been at loggerheads with Benazir Bhutto since she came to power in 1993, argued that Sikander had resigned without consulting him. He also pleaded helplessness, saying the matter was pending in court.

Since 1993, Benazir Bhutto has been trying to take charge of the POK government, but has been unable to get rid of Qayyum, who has projected himself as a great supporter of the Kashmiri cause each time he has faced a threat from the Benazir Bhutto government in Islamabad.

A number of factors have contributed to the federal government's problems. For example, the Bhutto government was not prepared for the developments in POK which began with Sikander's resignation. The PPP's troubleshooters failed to match the Qayyum-Sikander combination. To add to its woes, was the wrangling within the POK unit of the PPP. At least three party leaders were eyeing the president's office and, therefore, competing against each other. This competitiveness among its own flock proved to be the PPP's undoing—even its main ally at the Centre, the Pakistan Muslim League-Junejo (PML-J) decided to go it on its own in POK. They managed to forge a four-member forward bloc in Qayyum's party which publicly vowed to support the PML-J in the next elections.

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A section even favoured dismissing the Qayyum government—there is a constitutional provision which stipulates that if the POK government fails to function in accordance with the Constitution and the international commitments made by Pakistan under the United Nations resolutions on Kashmir, it can be dismissed.

But the PPP's allies and its federal ministers opposed resorting to such measures. Prime Minister Bhutto agreed that in view of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, the federal government should not do anything that could harm Pakistan's stand on the disputed territory. But it remains to be seen how long the Centre will resist this temptation. Benazir hasn't forgotten that after her own government was dismissed in 1990, her party's government in the state, too, was sacked.

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Qayyum's Muslim Conference is supported by the main Pakistani Opposition party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz). The Muslim Conference, which has 40 members in the House at present, has its own problems. Qayyum has become increasingly unpopular and experts feel he will find it difficult to retain all the seats in the upcoming elections. The 'misconduct' of his minister son, Attique, has not only annoyed many sitting MLAs but has also damaged Qayyum's own reputation.

In the 55-member assembly, 40 members are directly elected, eight are indirectly elected—of which two seats are reserved for women. The rest of the seven members are voted by the Azad Kashmir Council whose chairperson is the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Of the 40 direct seats, polling for 12 is held in Pakistan where the Kashmiri refugees are settled—said to be Qayyum's weakest constituency.

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Having outwitted Prime Minister Bhutto for the time being, it is to be seen how he fares in the June 30 elections. Benazir Bhutto, of course, wouldn't like to see him return to power. 

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