Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
I don’t know why, but I somehow feel sorry for the ill-starred General Pervez Musharraf, the ousted Pakistani military dictator, who returned home last month to stake his claim to Pakistan’s Aiwan-e-Sadr (presidential palace) or at the very least to establish his own political legitimacy by gaining access into the National Assembly as a representative of the once dominant Muslim League and the ethos that Jinnah’s party represented.
By his own admission, the man was having a reasonably good time in his four-year-old self-imposed exile lecturing or talking on TV shows (for pay), wandering through the US, the UK and, of course, Dubai, that has become the last refuge of subcontinental discards and moneybags, if you will.
Just think of the kind of Pakistanis and Indians, professionals, businessmen and plain absconders, who have made the prosperous city their home. Even our Bollywood and sports stars from many countries seem to have given into the charm of Dubai.
And, Dubai it was where Musharraf had announced his intention to contest the Pakistani elections. One wonders though whether the General would at all be able to get back to the Dubai dreamworld in case he loses the election, if allowed to contest. The courts appear to have fore-closed that option given the open animosity which some of the very senior judges including of the chief justice of the supreme court, Ifikhar Chowdhury and the highly politicized Bar Associations bear towards him.
The man who inspired awe only a few years ago looks so very harried as one nomination paper after another filed by him to contest the elections is rejected. The only nomination paper of the five-or was it seven- he filed and was accepted has since come under a cloud. It doesn’t speak well of Pakistani institutions if the man is somehow kept from exercising his right as a citizen. Perhaps parliament would have been the right place to try him once he was elected, not the courts, so patently biased against him. The Pakistani judges bar a few exceptions, I am afraid, have not always been models of judicial rectitude. Iftikhar Chowdhry, the Chief Justice, himself has substantive blots on his book as did a number of other judges. It was the judges who fathered the “doctrine of necessity” during the tenure of another military General, Ziaul Haq.
The doctrine was effectively invoked by his successor military dictator Gen. Musharraf when it suited his purposes and was always endorsed by the judges of the day. I remember the great Pakistani journalist Mazhar Ali Khan, father of the once popular rebel leftist star of the west Tariq Ali, then London-based, telling me in Lahore about how Bhutto, whose dictatorial traits he always loathed, was done to death by Ziaul Haq with the connivance of the judiciary.
Bhutto was arrested by Zia and released briefly to be prosecuted and condemned to death later for the murder of a political worker. The popular reception received by Bhutto on his short-lived release shook the military dictator to the very marrow of his bones, according Mazhar, whose weekly Viewpoint magazine was a must read for any keen student of Pakistani affairs. For him the reception that Bhutto got was an unprecedented affair, one which had come as a wake-up call even for a critic like Mazhar. The police and army bandobast had been made to appear as stupid as millions hit the roads on buses, trucks, tractors and bullock-carts. This was the movement when Zia struck back, had Bhutto picked up yet again to face the trial which ended with the hangman’s noose. The judiciary in this case, too, had failed to act according to the letter of the law, instead choosing to obey Zia’s command.
I frankly don’t know why Musharraf has chosen to stick his neck out, knowing as he does that the judiciary will go for him at the slightest opportunity. And if for some reason he had hoped fairer treatment from the judiciary he should have known that he figures on the hit list of several terrorist outfits. The Lal Masjid episode of Islamabad and the bad blood it created between him the Muslim clergy should have been reason enough for him to seriously consider the judicial and terrorist threats.
Musharraf would like to see himself as a man of action who believes in taking risks as, for instance, he did in Kargil, an action he retiterated only the other day, was a military success which nearly cost the Indian forces their access to Siachen and Ladakh. For all his effort he only got the flak and Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister at the time, the credit via the Americans, he has said.
For the record Nawaz Shariff very reluctantly agreed to Musharraf’s participation in the elections via the friendly intervention of Saudi Arabia. Despite Benazir’s assassination, believed to have been master-minded by Musharraf, the PPP led by Asif Ali Zardari and Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, also chose to look the other way when Musharraf’s candidature was mooted.
But where exactly does that leave the former military dictator? Nowhere in particular. Even if he finally manages permission to contest from the constituency of his choice success won’t take him beyond the National Assembly, if he wins at all. The old pros, politicians like the Sharif brothers of Punjab, the PPP of Zardari and Bilawal, the MQM, representing nearly four crore mohajirs (migrants from India) are hardly likely to yield to him. The Jammat-e-Islami of Maulana Hafizur Rahman may be persuaded to help him out but the question remains how many of his candidates will be elected in the first place. The Chaudhri brothers of Punjab may pick up a few seats, hardly enough to challenge the established pros.
Worse still for the General is the fact that the Army has continued to maintain a safe distance from him. General Kayani, the Army Chief who has got a year of his extended term still left, has his hands full with Afghanistan and the likely step-up in the east, particularly along the border and the LOC in Kashmir. The Army obviously would like to keep out of the fray as the civilians battle it out in the streets and alleys of Pakistan.
Going by reports, the current poll campaign is nothing comparable with what I had seen some two and a half decades ago. I had occasion to witness some of it in Rawalpindi and Lahore. The military was still around, playing a partisan role behind the scenes, on behalf of Nawaz Sharif. Money was freely pumped in by the ISI into the campaign.
On the face of it, it was as good or bad an election rally as I had seen in many Indian cities and villages. In Lahore I ran into a busload of women campaigners for Benzair Bhutto’s PPP and what a frenzied pack it was, particularly when Benazir appeared on the scene. The rally itself was as they usually come in these parts. I don’t see that kind of frenzy being around this time over.
The fear of the gun is bound to keep many indoors but then we have the young brigade wooing voters on Imran Khan’s behalf. Salacious references to Khan’s flamboyant younger days are rampant as must inevitably be his marriage (since annulled) to the Jewish millionaires Jemina.
Then there is the overhanging business of Islamists finding ways out to keep out those whom they don’t like by raising doubts of one kind or another about a candidate being a good Muslim or not. People I am told, are asked to recite or identify quotations from the Quran before their nomination papers are accepted.
Then you have Bilawal Bhutto Zardari resuming the PPP’s poll campaign. It had been suggested earlier, wrongly it is claimed now, that Bilawal had a tiff with his father over (a) the way his sister Ms. Talpur had interfered at every stage from selection of candidates onwards and (b) that the campaign lacked a sense of direction. Bilawal had then left for Dubai in a huff, as it were. It is a fact though that Bilawal did return but only after his father visited him in Dubai. Bilawal may not be particularly fluent in Urdu but then both his mother and grandfather were no great Urdu orators either. Z.A. Bhutto usually used cusswords freely as part and parcel of his speeches. But then Zulfiqur Ali had his own way with the masses and knew exactly how to use his discomfort with Urdu as an advantage. Incidentally, the founder of Pakistan, Mr. Jinnah, did not read, write or speak in Urdu.
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