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Posts Tagged Musharraf

Musharraf’s Grave Mistake of Returning to Pakistan by Saeed Qureshi

 

 

images-10To err is human. In that context, Musharraf’s return to Pakistan is patently a fatal mistake for his future and perceived political career. If adjudged as a convict for abrogating the constitution, he could go to jail for a pretty long term. His fate hangs in balance. His legal battle is an overwhelming distraction from his political campaigning for the 2013 general elections. His supporters that are sizable in number must have been shocked and rather starkly dismayed over the tragic turn of events against Musharraf for embarking upon a political course as the president of APML.

Pervez Musharraf landed in Pakistan on March 24 after ending his elf imposed exile. Since that day he travels surrounded by an army of body guards and in strict security conditions. This  restricted  and prohibitive movement coupled with the legal cases curtail his chances for lobbying and electioneering for his party and thus dim the possibility of winning any seats in May 11 elections.

He might have had iron-clad guarantees from internal and external undertakers and intermediaries. But evidently in a complex situation that sudden popped up against him, even king Abdullah may not be able to influence the Pakistan judiciary for letting Musharraf off the hook.

Musharraf who ruled Pakistan for 9 years now conversely is an isolated and helpless person who can look forward to a prolonged involvement in legal wrangling in order to defend him and get absolved. Despite having an army of devoted and zealous fans and party workers, he personally may not benefit from the May 11 elections. When the dazzling glory of power fades the tormenting spell of sufferings follows readily When a power wielder falls from grace in third world and in unstable societies like Pakistan, a degrading and fearsome nemesis starts.

Field Marshall Ayub Kahn remained at the helm of power for over a decade and look at the miserable manner he went into oblivion. Those Pakistani leaders who betrayed or did not serve Pakistan in right earnest would remain despised for all time to come. And former COAS and Pakistan’s president Musharraf would be no exception for an indelible stigma tagged with his name.

There are several high profile criminal cases pending against Musharraf in Pakistani courts. These are subverting constitution of Pakistan and treason trial under clause 6 of the constitution, the murder of PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto and Baluch leader Nawab Akbar Bugti and the Lal Masjid massacre.

A two-judge bench of the apex court has summoned Musharraf on April 15 in connection with his trial under Article-6 of the High Treason Act 1973 for imposing emergency rule and arresting 60 judges including Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry in 2007.

 With regard to Benazir Bhutto’s murder case, the Anti-Terrorist Court (ATC) has once again summoned all the accused including the former president Pervez Musharraf on April 23. Currently Pervez Musharraf is on an interim bail in murder cases of Benazir Bhutto & Nawab Akbar Bugti. In August 2011 he was declared a proclaimed offender and his property was attached because of his absence.

 Pervez Musharraf’s latest acknowledgment that his government inked a secret deal with the United States for allowing drone strikes on Pakistan territory night also be added to the litany of serious charges against him.

Apart from his trials in courts, he is direly exposed to assassination attempts from Taliban and other religious extremists groups who hate him for his philosophy of “enlightened moderation that he pursued vigorously during his rule. During his tenure in power, the religious militants made at least five attempts on his life but each time he escaped. Of late Pervez Musharraf’s name has been placed on the Exit Control List which means he would remain in Pakistan till the finalization of legal cases. Who knows he may not be cleared and instead sentenced?  

Under the burgeoning civil society, hyping judicial activism, and an assertive media, it would not be possible for the army to come to the rescue of its former boss who is now a spent force and who looks like a liability rather than an asset. The old timers of the armed forces, who might still have some soft corner for the former colleague and currently troubled former head of state, may also not assert to put their weight behind him.

It seems that Musharraf is now abandoned without any visible help from his own lobby. How would he emerge unscathed from this complex cobweb of crises can hardly be presaged by even the best of oracles.

 

I would end my current write-up by reproducing excerpts from my two previously written articles on Pervez Musharraf.

In the first article (October 2, 2010) “Musharraf May not Return to Pakistan so Soon”, I wrote the following lines: 

“However, as soon as he goes back to Pakistan, he would find himself like a bird in a cage. He will not be able to address the rallies, hold public meetings, lead processions, inspire and mobilize the masses. All this inputs are sine quo non for changing the status quo. His confinement to the four walls, his inability to move around, and the lurking fear of being ambushed are the monumental challenges that he should be aware of. I cannot draw any other conclusion except to maintain that he is not going to Pakistan so soon. Yet his right to play politics as a citizen of Pakistan is incontrovertible and must be acknowledged.”

In the second article (August 11, 2010), “Musharraf Ready to Jump into the Political Arena” I made the following observation.

“According to reliable sources although Pervez Musharraf was eager to shuttle between London and Pakistan, yet he cannot venture going right now because of the formidable challenges and grave risks exposed to him. There is a lurking danger to his life from religious radical militants and from the Baluch avengers of Akbar Bugti’s assassination ascribed to Pervez Musharraf.

Additionally he might be trapped in a maze of legal proceedings on issues such as storming of the Islamabad’s so-called Red Mosque in which scores of the resident female students were killed in the army action. He might be tried for suspending constitution and imposing emergency in November 2007. As such, he has a plethora of threats to his life during his stay in Pakistan”.

The writer is a senior journalist and a former diplomat

 

qureshisaeed50@hotmail.com

 

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Our national disgrace

When a most foolish prime minister after committing an avoidable blunder handed over on a gilded platter this country to his army chief in October 1999, there was, to put it mildly, from a nation imbued with democratic principles, a strange outpouring of widespread joy. The love of and desire for democracy was shelved.

Gen Pervez Musharraf inherited a country that was broke, and that was regarded as an international pariah due to its nuclear ambitions. Initially he did not do a bad job of running it, with a cabinet of 12 citizens, and his popularity ranking by and large was favourable. We chugged along, with no help from the outer world, with no internal upheavals. Then came 2001 and 9/11, and Musharraf was established as one of the world`s most sought after leaders. Pakistan`s geographical location and his wink-of-an-eye decision had seen to it.

Then he got carried away, it all went to his head, by April 2002 he had `lost it`. His referendum was the beginning of his end. He then further `lost it` by picking out the worst possible political actors on the national stage with whom to form a political party and run away with the elections he was bound, by the Supreme Court, to hold at the end of that year. His choice of manpower on the political side could not have been worse (well, yes, judging by what we have today, perhaps it amazingly could have been).

To form his new assemblies some bright spark advised him to decree that all those standing for election must be graduates. Utterly ridiculous, and against all democratic norms, because not only did it shut out the larger majority of the nation from offering themselves to the electorate but it opened wide the door to corruption (which until then had been held within reasonable bounds).

Musharraf knew his country-kin, he knew their propensity for corruption and he must have known that a large number of those he sought to install in his parliament would conjure up bogus degrees — which of course they did with his encouragement. He was not ignorant as to how entrenched was corruption. At the end of 1999, in an interview with the BBC, when asked how corruption in the armed forces compared with that of the political classes — Mickey (Kamran) Shafi will like this one — he responded, curtly and aptly “We are all of the same stock.”

So, no one knew, or even cared, at that time how many bogus degrees had been produced before the Election Commission, and exactly how many cheats and crooks entered parliament — though we did have a fair idea from the calibre of those that sat there.

The graduate requirement was operable for the 2008 elections and so more bogus degrees were cooked up by the new lot of aspiring legislators. We now know much more. On orders passed by the Supreme Court, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has reportedly sent off the degree certificates produced by 934 parliamentarians for verification (the total number of these leech-like beings is 1,170). Apparently 161 certificates were illegible — what does that tell us as to their validity?

It seems that a dozen or so cheats and crooks have already been disqualified by our courts and over 50 cases are pending. The most famous legislator allegedly with a bogus degree is the man in charge of the law ministry who claims to hold a doctorate from a university that sounds like an Italian ice cream factory.

The media, particularly the press, has been active in its coverage of this national disgrace — and must be given due credit. `Civil society` which reared its head in 2007 has not been too vocal, there have been no marches or demos against the cheats, charlatans, con-persons and four-flushers who have passed themselves off as legislators.

The two intrepid tilters at windmills, friends Naeem Sadiq and Isa Daudpota, appealed in April to the Chief Justice of Pakistan pleading that he order that the parliamentarians` degrees be verified and those found with fake degrees be disqualified immediately and barred from ever again standing for election.

Last month they sent him a second appeal requesting that he take legal action against the CEC or Chief Election Commissioner (current and previous) for failing to verify the declared degrees and allowing cheats and crooks to sit in our parliament. The fault that they are where they are lies entirely with the CECs.

The CEC and, by extension, the HEC must shoulder the blame for this unacceptable state of affairs and see that the matter is sorted out as per the orders of the Supreme Court and as per accepted norms of honesty. All who have sat in parliament between 2002 and 2007 and all who now sit there must share the guilt for having connived and acquiesced with gross moral corruption. The universities of the country must cooperate, and not in their turn cheat and falsify, in weeding out the bogus degrees and by advising the HEC which in turn should make public the list of all the criminals who have conned us.

To top it all, when on the subject of connivance and acquiescence, we had the chief minister of Balochistan, a `nawab` no less, Aslam Raisani, who recently when uttering on the subject of the holders of fake degrees in his assembly (13 members of whom allegedly stand accused) is quoted (this newspaper June 30) as having stated that “a degree is a degree whether fake or genuine”. If such be the belief and thinking of our legislators, then not even God Almighty can save this country from its moral morass.

arfc@cyber.net.pk

 

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