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The ethnic politics of Mr. Nawaz Sharif has been checkmated by the PPPs various alliances around the provinces. The integration of the MQM into the provincial and the federal cabinet, much to the chagrin of Mr. Sharif provides Mr. Sharif with partners that may be more loyal to the PPP. Mr. Zardari’s long term strategy prepares the PPP for the next elections and reduces the clout of the PMLN in the center.

Strategy of PPP’s alliances Editorial Daily TimesThe PPP government in Sindh has given 13 ministries to the MQM in its cabinet of 38 at the culmination of “talks” between the two parties in the province. The governorship of the province will also stay with the MQM, for the time being at any rate. This is a strategic alliance if ever there was one, with a strong bearing on national politics and some of the core issues driving politics these days. The two parties have leapt over many difficult fault-lines to reach the high point of coalition government. And the relationship is likely to last a while because the concessions have been given to the MQM by the PPP from a position of strength in the province as well as the centre.

The grievances were recent, like what happened in Sindh after the assassination of Ms Benazir Bhutto, purging the decade-old Sindhi sense of injustice flecked with the memory of drive-by killings in the cities. Talks were threatened with breakdown because the “group memory” was opposed to any kind of communication except the bullet. But two leaders with ability to override the “group memory” were able to come together on commonalities. And the commonalities were of recent date and very significant, relating to the survival of the PPP at the centre.

Mr Altaf Hussain sensed the convergences early and sent the first positive message before the arrival of Ms Bhutto in Karachi on 18 October 2007, but more emphatically after her assassination in December 2007. The MQM also took a clear policy line on the issue of the restoration of the judges. It was the first party to refer to the ARD commitment made on the independence of the judiciary in the 2006 Charter of Democracy, far ahead of its ally, the PMLQ. It had taken on the nation-wide lawyers’ movement in May 2007, but what then looked like a defence of President Musharraf later on became an important plank in the policy of the PPP on the judges’ restoration.

Strategically, the violence of April 9 blamed on the MQM did not hurt the PPP; what happened earlier to ex-chief minister Arab Raheem in the Sindh Assembly, and blamed on the PPP, did not hurt the MQM. Both parties benefited from the violence perpetrated by the lawyers and others on the PMLQ leader, Dr Sher Afgan Niazi. The PMLN leader Mr Nawaz Sharif saw the developing strategic relationship between the PPP and the MQM and tried to forestall it by making his party’s participation in the federal coalition conditional to leaving the MQM out of the Islamabad arrangement. But after his party got the big ministries it wanted, it had to let the PPP make its alliance with the MQM in Karachi.

An important part of the “transformation” of Mr Asif Ali Zardari is his strategic thinking on Sindh, the province where his party won enough seats not to require any partners in power. But he took a line that most Sindhi leaders would not take, given their power base in rural Sindh. He announced that Pakistan’s national economy – concentrated in Karachi – could only be run if the PPP took the MQM on board and ensured peace in the industrial heart of Pakistan. The real message was absorbed appropriately by the MQM leader-in-exile who knew that it had a bearing on national politics too.

The PPP crossed other gulfs too to make governments or be a part of governments in the provinces. In Balochistan it was well placed through Sardar Raisani to create an environment of communication where nothing but quasi-separatism was the coin in currency. In Peshawar, it got together with an ANP which had nothing but old wounds to show for its efforts in the past to walk together with the PPP. In exchange for the coalition in Islamabad, it has placed its ministers in the Punjab cabinet too. The stage was thus set for a balanced relationship with an aggressive and emerging power in Punjab in the shape of PMLN of Mr Nawaz Sharif.

Mr Nawaz Sharif has sixty percent of the country when he controls Punjab. From his base in Punjab he can make the federation eat out of his hands and dictate terms to the other provinces. But Mr Zardari has changed one plank in the old strategy of dominance followed by Punjab: he has checkmated Mr Sharif’s tactic of joining the lawyers’ movement and its street power by moving closer to the establishment in Islamabad, thus removing the most crucial element from a possible plan by the PMLN to cause a crisis of governance and trigger a mid-term election. Now any challenge from Punjab will have to take into account the PPP’s power base in Sindh and the “smaller provinces”.

People are already talking of “alternative numbers” in parliament if the Asif-Nawaz talks in Dubai break down and the PMLN decides to quit the government in Islamabad. The big asset with the PMLN would be the street muscle of the lawyers’ movement; but that will work more effectively in Punjab but less and less effectively in the smaller provinces despite the provincial bars. This state of strategic balance should ensure a resolution of differences “in the middle” rather than in the defeat of any one party. *