On Friday, Benazir Bhutto announced that she will return to Pakistan on October 18, ending her eight years of self-exile. Soon afterwards, reports from a variety of parties in Pakistan indicated that the next 2-4 days would be marked by extremely important developments. There has been much talk over the weekend, but little action. Perhaps Pakistan’s political players have been bit by the Ramadan bug. Restrained by the Islamic calendar, Pakistan’s political elite will soon be compelled to make decisive decisions by the political calendar. Musharraf has temporarily sidelined Nawaz Sharif & Co., but faces challenges from the Supreme Court as well as current political partners to a deal with Benazir.

NAWAZ IN DETENTION DURING PLAYTIME
Nawaz’s ill-fated return to Pakistan last Monday was handled deftly by Pakistani authorities. The former prime minister wisely surrounded himself with Western and Pakistani journalists on PIA flight PK 786. As a result, Pakistan’s current rulers made sure not to manhandle Sharif in front of the world press, thereby increasing his popularity. Their eviction of Sharif was conducted behind the scenes, giving the Musharraf government plausible deniability. They can merely repeat the claim that Nawaz left on his own accord. They released Sharif’s supporters after a few days of detention—a very economical cessation of civil and political liberty designed to avoid overkill.

The former prime minister is effectively under house arrest in Saudi Arabia. His wife, Kulsoom, stated on Friday that Nawaz’s meeting with Saudi King Abdullah would produce a major “surprise.” That it did not. The Saudi monarch told Sharif to wait till the end of Ramadan and the Eid holiday to deal with his status. Barring any favorable decision from an extremely busy Supreme Court, this move keeps Sharif out of the country during the time period in which Musharraf needs to be re-elected. Should Sharif even return in a month, he could find a totally different political landscape: a uniformless Musharraf re-elected as president and Benazir back in the country, crowned queen and off buying linens for the prime minister’s official residence. Kulsoom could return to Pakistan and try to manage in his absence, but the utility of that move remains unclear. A return by Shahbaz is risky, and his cancellation of his trip with Nawaz suggests he is afraid of what will happen to him after arriving in Pakistan. Nonetheless, he could decide that absolute political irrelevancy is worse than jail, and make the trip to save PML-N.

MUSHARRAF’S RE-ELECTION: IN THE NUDE?
Pakistan must hold presidential elections—conducted via an electoral college consisting of federal and provincial assembly members—between September 15 and October 15. Chaudhry Shujaat has guaranteed Musharraf 56% of the votes in his favor; while Musharraf does not need votes from Benazir Bhutto’s People’s Party for re-election, he does need their parliamentary presence for a quorum. Members of the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM)—i.e. Nawaz’s PML, Jamaat-e Islami, and Imran Khan’s Tehreek-i Insaaf—will resign once Musharraf’s nomination papers are accepted. This move could potentially deny Musharraf the necessary quorum should it result in the fall of the NWFP government.

As a result, it becomes necessary for Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s faction of the Jamaat-ul Ulema-e Islam to prop up both the provincial governments in NWFP and Balochistan. What Fazlur Rahman seeks in return is unclear. He’s been pretty loyal to Musharraf since 2003, playing an interesting balancing act between the MMA and Musharraf. His name has come up as an interim prime minister during the general elections. It would indeed be ironic that a cleric PM would house sit before the liberal coalition comes to power—especially since the US didn’t want Nawaz back because of his proximity to religious conservatives. However, looks can be deceiving: the maulana is a politician first and foremost.

Benazir too has waved the quorum card in recent days, perhaps for the first time, to put some pressure on Musharraf to take off his uniform before re-election. Mushahid Hussain stated on Saturday that Musharraf will resign from the army before November 15 and take the oath of office as a civilian, but such claims have been made before, and in fact were seemingly contradicted by another member of Musharraf’s government.

Should Musharraf even be willing to doff the uniform, his timing is constrained on another front—within his own military. His political adversity, to a degree, poses a challenge to the army’s cohesiveness and reputation. At some point, Musharraf could be seen as a liability for the military’s corporate interests. A uniformless Musharraf would then be easily expendable; deposition of a naked Musharraf by his deputy is conceivable. As a result, Musharraf can only lay down his gun when he can trust those who are armed. His deputy chief of army staff will retire on October 7. Musharraf can only retire from the army after that date, when he would be able to appoint a bonafide loyalist, ISI chief Ashfaq Kiyani, as his successor for COAS.

However, the Eid ul-Fitr holiday will likely occur in Pakistan from October 13-15, and that reduces the first window for a uniformless re-election to the period on or between October 8 and 12. Alternatively, Musharraf could dissolve parliament, call early elections, and run for re-election under fresh assemblies. This is the path Bhutto favors; it gives Musharraf’s presidency and their alliance greater credibility. Should her party fare very well in those elections, it would make her not only the quorum-maker, but the king-maker, and would deny the APDM use of their quorum-denying card. The Chaudhries oppose a uniformless re-election—out of fear it would over-empower Benazir. They, in fact, are still mumbling a bit about emergency rule, though that option hasn’t gained steam since it was nixed last month.

The recently amended election rule, irrespective of its constitutionality, permits Musharraf to run for re-election under uniform. The Pakistani president could then seek re-election while under uniform, and then retire from the army soon within days or weeks. This is the path most preferable to Musharraf as he secures his continuity from a position of strength.

SILENCE MIGHT PROVE TO SPEAK LOUDLY
There is also speculation that a deal between Bhutto and Musharraf has already been concluded or will be completed in the coming days, but won’t be formally announced. This keeps opponents of the deal off-base, distances Bhutto from Musharraf’s negative ratings, and permits Bhutto and Musharraf to maintain a veneer of non-collusion. Moreover, should Musharraf make some significantly unpopular and unconstitutional decisions, Bhutto can give tacit support without being tarred by such moves. Though a more informal deal will be by nature less stable, it will also rock the boat with the PML-Q much less than a more transparent arrangement.

FRACTURE AND CONSLIDATION
The stability of the PML-Q should be a rising concern for Musharraf. Recent weeks have witnessed the slow (and perhaps premature) defection of PML-Q leaders to the PML-N, including a senior member on Sunday. As many as three dozen PML-Q MNAs might switch over to the Nawaz wing, in protest of both Musharraf and the Chaudhries. As a result, PML-Qer and Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Ellahi has enlisted the support of the previous (and more popular) PML-Q president, Mian Muhammad Azhar, to work to consolidate the fracturing party. A disintegrating PML-Q leaves Musharraf too vulnerable, especially if he retires from the army, and bolsters the position of both the PPP-P and the PML-N.

The lawyer’s movement too may be falling apart, allegedly at the hands of the PPP, as a part of their effort to ease things for Musharraf. That may very well backfire for Bhutto, as the movement appealed to the Pakistani public for their single-minded constitutionalism. Though the movement is heavily PPP-P influenced (Aitzaz Ahsan, the chief justice’s advocate, is a PPP MNA), if Bhutto treads too closely to Musharraf, she could permit the PML-N to absorb its remnants. Should this occur, she might face intolerable opposition from within her camp as more might come to the conclusion that her insistence on a deal with Musharraf is not out of national interest, but to avoid legitimate charges of political corruption.

In sum, the volatility within Pakistan’s political camps could rule out the possibility of dramatic announcements in the coming days, if not weeks. A deal could be achieved, but go unannounced. It is even conceivable that Benazir and Musharraf will never really achieve a comprehensive deal; rather, they will share political space over an extended period of time, each will give and take, and a moderately stable environment of friendly competition will exist. Such an arrangement permits Bhutto and Musharraf to retain their political bases and prevent the consolidation of opposition to them; but it also maintains an environment of mutual suspicion and the possibility that one will sense vulnerability on the other side and go for the jugular. Pakistan’s ‘deal-saga’ might prove to be less action-packaged drama than a political version of “The Never Ending Story.”