ISLAMABAD Reuter: Two months ago Pakistan’s opposition alliance confidently presented the government of military President Mohammad Zia ul Haq with an ultimatum to announce a date for new elections by September 20.
As that deadline passed almost noticed the alliance found it threatened with splits challenged by rivals and uncertain where to go next
The government has not budged on the issue of elections. It stands by the legitimacy of the polls held under martial law and with parties banned in 1985 and says new ones need not be held before 1990.
Faced with this and still nursing its wounds from the battering it received in last month’s government clampdown the 10party Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) quietly dropped its deadline last week.
The new demand announced after two days of sometimes stormy debate among alliance leaders is for elections to be held before the end of the year.
The most prominent opposition figure Benazir Bhutto told reporters the plan was to increase peaceful pressure on the government by building up the alliance organization on a regional basis.
“The party failed to appreciate the difference between amorphous electoral support and street power mass support does not necessarily imply that people will come out on the streets on the Party’s call”.
Attendance at the banned rallies was low by Pakistani standards and the agitation was largely confined to Bhutto’s home province Sind. Punjab home of more than half the population on the whole watched from the sidelines.
The MRD leaders meeting for the first time after many of them were released from jail had great difficulty in agreeing on a plan of action according to senior alliance members.
The 10 member parties range from religious right to populist left and many are deeply suspicious of Bhutto and her dominant PPP.
Former Air Force Chief Asghar Khans Tehrik e Istiqlal which draws its support from the urban population of Sind and Punjab did not attend at all The party has distanced itself from the MRD over the past few months and has threatened to withdraw completely.
Another threat comes from Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi a former Chief Minister of Sind and close associate of Benazir Bhuttos executed father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Jatoi founded a new party; the National People’s Party (NPP) three weeks ago and has been wooing senior opposition figures. He and another prominent PPP defector former Punjab Governor Ghulam Mustafa Khar (RPT Khar) accused 33yearold Benazir Bhutto of autocratic tendencies.
While the MRD has still to recover its drive after the August setback commentators say the government is also beset by problems.
First among them is law and order. The first day of the new Parliamentary session on Thursday brought fierce complaints of increasing dacoitry (baniditry) from opposition members.
Some deputies elected in the controversial 1985 elections called for Junejo and Interior Minister Mohammad Aslam Khattak to resign.
Meanwhile an outbreak of violence between Shia and Sunni Moslems killed at least 14 people and brought an indefinite curfew to much of Lahore Pakistan’s second largest city.
The government’s international image already dented by the August clampdown took a further beating this month with three incidents of political violence.
The hijack of a US. Air liner at Karachi Airport on Sept. 5 resulted in the deaths of at least 22 hostages and brought criticism of Pakistan’s security forces
It was followed by the killing of two foreign diplomats an Iraqi consulate blown up by a bomb in Karachi and a Soviet military attaché shot dead in Islamabad apparently by a deranged man.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 26, 1986
