Bitter Victory

"If I am compelled to take some individuals into custody for views that strike at the country's existence, then nobody should interfere." Was that former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India speaking? No, this time it was Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of neighboring Pakistan, defending the arrest and imprisonment of opposition politicians following parliamentary elections last month. Charging that Bhutto had stolen the election, opposition M.P.s refused to take their seats in the National Assembly; nearly 100 of their supporters have been killed in clashes with police, and 25,000 others arrested.

Safe Bet. Bhutto's troubles are largely of his own making. While Indira Gandhi went down to honest defeat, the Pakistani Prime Minister is reaping the bitter fruits of what was almost certainly a dishonest victory. Bhutto had called elections for much the same reason as the Indian leader. Hand-picked by the generals after Pakistan's debacle in the 1971 war over Bangladesh, he had ruled ever since under a state of emergency that, among other things, gagged the press and outlawed political assembly. Last January Bhutto called for elections to give his government a stamp of legitimacy; at the time, his victory seemed a safe bet, since the opposition was fractured and demoralized.

In a rare show of unity, however, nine opposition parties formed a coalition called the Pakistan National Alliance, which Bhutto contemptuously dismissed as "nine cats tied together by their tails." But the campaign--only the third since Pakistan became idependent in 1947--turned into an unexpectedly fierce contest. Just before the balloting on March 7, independent observers described the struggle between Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party and the National Alliance as too close to call --and they now believe that in a fair contest, the alliance might have won.

The reaction to the announcement that Bhutto's party had won an overwhelming victory--taking 155 parliamentary seats, v. 36 for the National Alliance--was outrage and disbelief. General strikes called by the opposition shut down the cities of Lahore, Karachi, Hyderabad, Rawalpindi and the capital of Islamabad. National Alliance candidates boycotted the subsequent provincial elections in the Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier, even though they were favored to win majorities in the last two provinces. In addition, the opposition demanded 1) Bhutto's resignation, 2) the disbanding of the election commission for failing to conduct a fair election, and 3) dissolution of the National Assembly pending new elections under a caretaker government, supervised by the army.

In a well-documented White Paper, the opposition last week charged that police and armed People's Party agents had terrorized polling places, chased voters away, stolen ballot boxes and stuffed them with their own ballots. In some districts, the polls never opened because of fear of violence, but the People's Party, remarkably, won heavily nonetheless. In other districts where the People's Party was losing, ballot counting was stopped until more pro-government ballots could be printed and rushed to the districts.

Warm Embrace. Aides to Bhutto conceded that "malpractices" had marred the results. The Prime Minister, though, flatly rejected demands for a new election. He said he would turn reports of irregularities over to the election commission, hinting that 20 to 25 seats in the assembly might be reversed in favor of the National Alliance. The opposition was not satisfied, believing it should have won 50 to 60 additional seats.

As he took the oath of office last week, Bhutto proffered "a warm embrace, a handshake" to the opposition. He offered to lift the state of emergency, release political prisoners and relax press censorship if the National Alliance would promise an end to "agitational politics." Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, the only prominent opposition leader not in jail, called the proposal "political blackmail." Said he: "By trying to bargain with the opposition on the question of human rights, Bhutto is attempting to strengthen his rule over the country." With the politicians locked in a dangerous standoff, some observers feared that the next response might come from the army, which has a long and inglorious tradition of interfering in Pakistani politics.

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