Bhutto Dealt a Setback in Pakistan : Her Opposition Party Loses Elections in 3 of 4 Provinces

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto suffered a significant political setback Sunday, losing regional elections in three of Pakistan’s four provinces, but diplomats and Pakistani analysts said her nomination as the nation’s new prime minister remains all but certain.

With official counting in the country’s four provincial assembly elections complete late Sunday, Bhutto’s opposition Pakistan People’s Party was defeated in all but her home province of Sind by the ruling nine-party Islamic Democratic Alliance, a military-backed coalition consisting largely of supporters of the late military ruler, President Zia ul-Haq.

Difficult to Govern

The results, which came just three days after crucial National Assembly elections that made the 35-year-old Bhutto the leader of the largest single national political party, leave the country politically split between the provincial and federal levels. The results will make it more difficult for Bhutto to govern if she does become prime minister, independent analysts and alliance leaders said.

In assessing Saturday’s provincial voting, the alliance leaders also contended that the setback for the People’s Party will hurt Bhutto’s chances of becoming prime minister, a post for which the nomination is yet to be made by Pakistani President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, a former Zia aide.

“This changes the entire political scenario,” said Oil Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali, who won both national and provincial seats in the recent voting. “Either Benazir will have to dissolve the (provincial) assemblies and cause a constitutional crisis, or she’ll have to put up with us, which will be very difficult for her.”

But Western diplomatic analysts, while conceding that the weekend elections eroded Bhutto’s victory of last week, said her provincial defeat is not enough to justify denying her the prime ministry.

“It’s roughly like the state and federal situation in the U.S.,” said one diplomat. “It’s like the governorships going to the Democrats after George Bush won the presidency.

“Besides, everything that Ghulam Ishaq Khan has done so far would be repudiated if he tried to meddle in the process now. This man has done all the right things with enormous integrity. If he doesn’t give it to Benazir, he would destroy a lot of the good will created through this election.”

Still, even Bhutto’s supporters grew more skeptical Sunday. Three days had passed since her party’s victory over the ruling alliance, they noted, and the president still had not contacted her personally.

Bhutto, a former exile and political prisoner who has been in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi since last week’s results were announced, called on the president to name her prime minister at a Thursday night press conference. Under the law, Ishaq Khan can wait up to 30 days before he makes his decision.

Although her People’s Party won nearly twice as many National Assembly seats as the Islamic Democratic Alliance, it did not win a simple majority. On Saturday, Bhutto said that she has attracted enough independents into her party to form a majority, but she has not released their names.

Strategy Seen as Bluff

Similarly, alliance leader Mian Nawaz Sharif, a 38-year-old multimillionaire who was a close Zia ally before the former president was killed in an unexplained air crash in August, also announced at press conferences that his party, too, had drawn in enough independents to form a majority, a strategy that one diplomat here said was largely bluff--”trying to put the shivers down peoples’ spines as part of the bargaining process.”

Sunday night, Sharif gathered his party leaders in his home city of Lahore and announced that the alliance’s narrow provincial victory over Bhutto’s party in Punjab, the most populous and prosperous province, provided further support to his bid to become prime minister.

“All one can say with certainty at the moment is that the horse-trading and wheeling and dealing has really begun,” another Western diplomat said.

Alliance leader Nisar agreed. “Nobody is in a position of absolute power. It will be a situation of give and take--what we can offer and what they (Bhutto’s party) can offer.”

(Pakistani officials said Sunday that President Ishaq Khan will see Bhutto, Sharif and other party leaders separately on Tuesday for talks on forming a government, news agencies reported.)

Despite the political uncertainty, the Pakistani military, which ruled for most of the country’s 41 years since independence and remains its strongest institution, appeared willing to allow the emerging democratic process to continue.

The army chief of staff. Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, sent messages to political leaders on both sides, congratulating them on their victories and praising the sobriety of their performance through the elections, which now rank as the fairest and most peaceful in Pakistan’s history. But Beg also sent strong signals that the army now wants all of the political forces to work together--urging them to form “a broad-based government” that analysts interpreted to include members of both major factions in the new Cabinet.

Elements of Status Quo

Members of the caretaker government that took over after Zia’s death echoed Beg’s message Sunday, indicating that the ruling Establishment, although willing to accept Bhutto as the Islamic world’s first female prime minister, is still hoping to temper the new government with elements of Pakistan’s status quo.

In a press conference to announce his resignation after losing badly last week, Pakistani Information Secretary Illahi Bux Soomro also urged: “Every party should pool its best talent together to form the new government. This is a very delicate period for the country.”

But Soomro, who was the handpicked information minister of Zia’s often-harsh military regime, addressed most of his comments to his own personal defeat--a position of humility that observers here said was as extraordinary as the entire series of steps toward democracy that have taken place in Pakistan since Zia’s sudden death.

Benazir Bhutto relishes her privacy, but politics has put an end to that. Story in View.