Ruling party's panic is visibly palpable

Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf has said it not once but thrice now. And in as many days. He would prefer opposition leader and Pakistan Peoples Party chairperson Benazir Bhutto to delay her homecoming until after October 18.

That is, a day after Pakistan's Supreme Court pronounces judgment on whether Musharraf's election as president is valid, a move that will finally end the 11-day-long waiting game since his contentious re-election for another five-year term, putting the president and his supporters within Pakistan and outside, out of their misery.

But the questions that remain unanswered in all three of Musharraf's interactions with senior journalists are these - Does one have anything to do with the other? What can be achieved by a delay to this "shotgun wedding"? And what is the reluctant groom's real concern?

Despite the overwhelming sense of déjà vu and the certainty that Islamabad does not view Bhutto in the same light as Musharraf's bete noire, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, bundled into a plane heading for Saudi Arabia when he arrived - and left - without a deal on September 10, the rising panic in the ranks of the ruling party over the return of a grass-roots politician with the potential to seed a people's movement is visibly palpable.

The events leading up to and after Bhutto's waapsi (return) are pivotal to Pakistan's future.

Predicated on the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), neither she nor other politicians can be tried in court but through parliamentary committees. It specifically lifts all "motivated" corruption cases against her, barring cases filed abroad and the "oil for food" deal case that are outside the ambit of the NRO.

The NRO was underwritten by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Washington's point man Richard Boucher who made half a dozen visits to both parties. But overnight, it is no longer a done deal. On Friday, the Supreme Court put the NRO on hold.

'Tricking'

The unseemly crowing of Bhutto rivals, the Chaudhrys of Gujrat over "tricking" the opposition leader into supporting Musharraf's re-election, now makes perfect sense and raises the prospect of judicial overreach in Pakistan's confused and ever shifting polity that continues to be in an unpredictable state of flux. It's a double blow to the Pakistan Peoples Party.

Party lawmakers may not have technically voted for Musharraf; but by abstaining, the president received the kind of tacit backing from a powerful mainstream and liberal party that allowed him to demonstrate to the west his own credentials as a centrist leader.

Equally, just as a long and contentious negotiation that began over a year ago succeeded in smoothing Bhutto's return to Pakistan without the prospect of arrest on arrival, the second and more difficult stage of the negotiations over the actual power sharing is set to commence with the fate of the NRO hanging in the balance and the military-led government still holding all the cards.

Despite Washington standing guarantor, is the NRO no more than a ruse to get the PPP's backing and then reduce it to a political pygmy?

Bhutto's team - which would like to see their nominee get a prominent place in a prospective caretaker government that could come into play in the event the president's election is invalidated on October 17 - must now change tactics to deal with the emerging reality of Islamabad and even Washington, proving neither friend or enemy, much less a political ally in the run up to 2008 elections.

Bhutto is unmoved, determined to fly into her hometown of Karachi on October 18, and prepare to rally her political troops to battle. Much has been said about the patent loss of confidence among PPP stalwarts who believe the "deal" has rocked the faith of the party's supporters inured to years of fighting military rule.

But it must be remembered that Bhutto's pragmatic streak as evidenced by her negotiations with the military is not new.

Similar tactics brought her back to the centre of power in 1993 after her euphoric return in 1986 turned to ashes, when she swept to power in 1988 but was as swiftly plucked out of the equation less than two years later by elements that dubbed her a security risk. In her second term, she and her party worked within the parameters of the military's security concerns.

It was the return of then arch rival Sharif to power - backed by the establishment and then benign Islamists - that created the illusion of the rise of two political forces when in reality the war for the heart and soul of this key Asian nation was, and will always be, between the liberals and the conservatives.

Undeniably, the Washington-brokered NRO was a signal to the anti-US Al Qaida-Taliban gathering in the tribal areas that Islamabad, now that it had Bhutto where it wanted her, was about to tackle them head on.

As fierce fighting in the border areas presage further turmoil even in Pakistan's settled areas, the establishment must weigh whether it would be better for the nation and the region to strengthen or weaken the leaders who they will need to fight the political battle that must follow for the soul of Pakistan.

Neena Gopal is an analyst on Asia.