Moves towards a power-sharing deal between former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and General Pervez Musharraf will not be derailed by last Thursday’s bloodbath in Karachi, a senior government official confirmed yesterday. But he warned that there would be a clampdown on the right of assembly prior to January’s elections.
Salman Shah, economic adviser to Pakistan’s prime minister, told Emerging Markets in an interview last night that an agreement between Bhutto and the government is still in the offing, despite the suicide bombings which killed 126 people on Thursday. “We have seen consensus, that we need to have full participation in the elections by all political parties. This [negotiation] is part of that process,” Shah said, adding that “investors have also endorsed this process.”
Shah said that the elections, scheduled for January next year, are unlikely to be postponed as a result of the violence. But one immediate consequence of the violence is that public political campaigning in the run-up to elections will be curtailed. “The way we conducted our affairs in the past – in an open manner – is probably no longer possible.
“In future we will have to conduct our politics in a manner where we don’t expose our leadership and the people to extremist acts”, he said. “You can’t have large numbers of people congregating in open public spaces where you can’t control security or scan everybody – it becomes difficult to protect them,” he said.
But he denied that such measures would impact the country’s return to democracy or serve as a way to restrain political opposition as polls draw near.
“It makes sense to be careful and prudent – we can’t open ourselves to security risks,” Shah said. He said all political parties would like to have clear “rules of the game” under which to conduct peaceful polls.
Musharraf has previously threatened to impose emergency rule or martial law if his plans to retain power are frustrated.
The attack on Thursday, on crowds welcoming Bhutto back from exile, is widely seen as a broader assault on the political system in Pakistan, in a year that has seen mounting violent extremism. An eight-day siege of the Red Mosque in Islamabad in July left more than 100 people dead.
But Shah downplayed the scope of extremism in Pakistan, claiming instead that violence has been limited to fringe elements bent on destabilizing the government. “The agenda of extremists is to disrupt everything, but they are a small minority”, he said. “They do not have support in Pakistan.”
The perpetrators of Thursday’s carnage acted “primarily to get attention,” Shah said. “They knew that [Bhutto’s return] would have global focus, so it was like an open invitation for this”, Shah said. He speculated that the attackers were probably aligned with armed groups in Waziristan, an area in northwest Pakistan reported to harbour Al Qaeda fighters.
Despite the violence, Shah points out the Pakistan’s economic fundamentals remain robust. “Financial markets have been extremely positive and have not been depressed by political developments,” he said. “The stock market is right now at its all time peak. Growth in Pakistan is irrepressible.” Despite Thursday’s bombing, Karachi’s stock market closed up on Friday, gaining 32.63 points.