Last Tuesday Pakistan’s Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, issued a ruling which could only be regarded as an untenable challenge to the authority of General Pervaz Musharraf – who appointed himself president in 2002, after seizing power in a military coup in 1999.
Because the court ruled that Gen Musharraf had no legal authority to summarily deport his political arch enemy, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, when Sharif attempted to end his seven-year exile on 10 September to challenge Musharraf in forthcoming presidential elections.
Yet Gen Musharraf had to have been far more troubled by the court’s pending ruling on the validity of his 6 October reelection. Because there was growing consensus in Pakistan that the court was poised to deem his presidency null and void.
Indeed, credible rumors are rife that Gen Musharraf devised an emergency plan to preempt publication of the court’s ruling. And, that he was prompted to do this after his secret police intercepted a call from CJ Chaudhry to a personal friend – in which he confirmed that the court had in fact decided 8 to 3 that Gen Musharraf’s reelection was unconstitutional.
Of course, this would explain why, channeling former US President Abraham Lincoln rather shrewdly, Musharraf defied American (and British) leaders by declaring a state of emergency on Saturday – under which he suspended the constitution, imposed martial law, replaced the gloating chief justice, and postponed parliamentary elections scheduled for January, indefinitely. After all, this was, at long last, the only way to preserve his de facto dictatorship.
Nevertheless, Musharraf defended his declaration in a televised address – as much to Americans as to his fellow Pakistanis – by insisting that he took this action because:
Pakistan is on the verge of destabilization if not arrested in time. . . . Inaction at the moment is suicide for Pakistan, and I cannot allow this country to commit suicide.
Never mind that he betrayed no hint of deception or irony in casting the judges of the Supreme Court as terrorists when he cited “judicial activism…extremism…[and] terrorism” as the destabilising forces that compelled his action.
Therefore, it’s hardly surprising that Musharraf wasted no time arresting, or putting under house arrest, all judicial and political opponents who he suspects might be inclined to oppose his declaration of emergency.
Meanwhile, I admonish you to ignore all of the shock and outrage being expressed by Western leaders – especially by President George W. Bush and others in the United States.
After all, it is self-evident that they do not really want democracy in Pakistan any more than they want it in Saudi Arabia. Because they have an entirely rational fear that popular elections would inevitably result in the rise to power of Islamic fundamentalists who harbor nothing but jihadist enmity toward the West – especially the US.
Not to mention that no Muslim leader has been more zealous than Musharraf has in helping the West fight Islamic terrorists; and, moreover, that no sane leader, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, would ever countenance allowing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal to fall into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists….
That said, Musharraf has clearly calculated that, notwithstanding their public protestations and threats about “reviewing the billions in military aid” they give to Pakistan annually, all Western leaders will ultimately abide whatever he does to remain in power. And he’s correct; not least because they’ve overlooked all of his broken promises to implement democratic reforms since executing his first military coup eight years ago. Which, of course, makes patently disingenuous all of their calls for Musharraf to “restore democracy” that Pakistan has never had under his leadership.
Finally, the far more intriguing and instructive reaction to this development is that of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
After all, despite her American-style rebuke of Musharraf’s “second coup”, there’s reason to suspect that she may have actually given tacit approval for his emergency decree. And this suspicion stems from the fact that the man Musharraf tapped to replace Chaudhry as chief justice is none other than the one Bhutto first appointed as a judge in 1995 – Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar.
More to the point, however, Bhutto must be acutely aware that, but for Musharraf’s military regime, al-Qaeda sympathizers would probably have little difficulty perfecting their attempts to assassinate her. And, no doubt this fact is fresh in her mind – given the attempt they bungled so spectacularly on 18 October as she was parading through one million Pakistanis who were celebrating her triumphal return after eight years in exile.
But one wonders about the nature of their political collaboration today – since their grand alliance to fend off Islamic extremists in the parliamentary elections is, presumably, now null and void.
Whatever the case, there’s no denying that both Musharraf and Bhutto will enjoy far greater personal safety in a Pakistan under martial law than in one where the free movement and association of would-be assassins – who want to kill him as much as they want to kill her – remained unchecked.
NOTE: Unlike most Western politicians, I feel no need to proffer sanctimonious platitudes about “democracy”. However, I do feel constrained to point out that the US government – purportedly the paragon of democratic governance – has committed so many democratic abuses in recent years that even the Americans have no moral authority to criticize Gen Musharraf.
Besides, given that the world accepts both Putin governing Russia as a police state and Hu Jintao governing China as a totalitarian state, why shouldn’t Gen Musharraf infer that it would accept him governing Pakistan as a military dictatorship…?
I just hope he has the foresight to establish a line of succession that would invariably produce military leaders who, like him, have
unabashedly pro-Western sympathies!
Related Articles:
day of reckoning…
*Published originally yesterday, Sunday, at 3:31 PM
Musharraf Pakistan emergency rule
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.