Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
Like him or not, you cannot ignore him while he is around. Braving the old enemy such as the judiciary and the Tehreek-e-Taliban of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, the former Pakistani Army Chief-turned-President of the country for eight years was still flaunting his customary soldier’s swagger these past two weeks in Karachi where he arrived from Dubai to put his hat in the Pakistani electoral ring, after getting a conditional bail from the Sindh High Court.
For the second time last week, when his bail period was extended by a fortnight Musharraf had put himself on the high pedestal arguing that he had ignored the threats held out against him when he decided to join the poll campaign; “I was liked wherever I was (in self exile) many insisted on hearing me and many others supported my desire to end my exile to lead my party, the Pakistan Muslim League, in the May elections. Where has Pakistan gone? he asked rhetorically in Karachi…” “My Pakistan, the one I left behind, with the economy looking up and the Pakistani people largely happier… where is my Karachi, the bustling, busy city which bounced with life then?”
Coming out of the Karachi court room he must have been surprised to see a lawyer throwing a shoe in his direction, the milling crowd around him, as he was exiting, made sure that the crude missile missed the target. It was not for the first time a shoe had been hurled at him; it had happened once before in his heyday. At a press conference a day earlier he had said that he was quite aware of the existing threats against him mainly from the Pakistani Taliban who have some bones to pick with him over the Lal Masjid episode in Islamabad and the operations mounted on the ‘madrassas’ run there.
Ever the confident commando, Gen. Musharraf, then as now, insisted he was only trying to save Pakistan by avoiding a large-scale bloodshed. He was distressed then as he was now how a madrassa or madrassas imparting religious instruction could be turned into a virtual fort with young boys forced to stand up to armed personnel. He had even so ensured that not much hardship was inflicted on the young ‘talibs’ (students).
Musharraf, unlike the Punjabis and the Sindhis or Balochis and other tribals, had come as a refugee along with thousands of other Muslims who at the time of partition had opted for Pakistan. Delhi had been his home before he migrated to Pakistan. I am not quite sure but one of the reasons why Mushharaf chose to return to Karachi from his 4-year-old exile could be its oversized population of Mohajir (refugees) from India. May be he felt he may not encounter similar warmth from Punjabis or from the Balochis or the Pushtoons.
The General is very conscious of the judiciary’s deep-rooted prejudice against him and its readiness to have him picked up for a couple of cases lodged against him before he quit Pakistan.
And, given the horribly biased mindset of the judiciary headed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Iftikhar Chowdhury it is quite on the cards that should the Chief Election Commissioner not step in quickly Musharraf’s election drive may not even take off.
But the Commando probably knows how to get the better off awkward situations; like he chose to mention at his press conference how he had personally seen Pak troops cutting off the Indian road link to Siachen and how a tactical strike cut-off the Kargil link between Leh and Srinagar and how “a military victory by our men was converted into a political defeat by civilian rulers of the day (Nawas Sharief).”
As for his future – to be decided in the next two weeks or so – I don’t see him making a major dent in the position of the two major Political parties – the People’s Party of Pakistan and the Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharief and his brother Shahbaz. You never know he might even shake hands with Imran Khan’s Tehreek-i-Insaf which would be a good thing for both of them should it materialize. I haven’t lately paid much attention to Awami National Party of Pukhtukhawa, the former Red Shirts of Khan Abdul Ghafar Khan which though in power in the province, figures on the Pakistan Taliban hit-list.
The holding of the general elections to the National and Provincial Assemblies sets a remarkable new landmark in the evolving history of Pakistan. It is a tribute in fact to the unexpected sagacity shown by the much discredited President, Asif Ali Zardari to whose credit must be listed the fact that his was the first democratically elected government to complete its Constitutional term of five years; the Zardari years were notable also for not one Opposition party leader being arrested during the past five years. Nor did he encourage anti -institutional rivalries to take root. Like, after ensuring the Army Chief Gen. Parvaiz Kyani an extra term as the Chief, expiring this year, he even refused to tangle with a cagey judiciary which, after the restoration of its role as a democratic institution, did not give up its adversarial anti Zardari role by forcing one of his Prime Ministers out of office, also very nearly ordaining a similar fate for the next Prime Minister.
In hindsight Zardari was remarkably clear-sighted about the nature of democracy, and his hopes for it in Pakistan. In 2004 he had gone on record telling an Indian newsmagazine that “when we introduced the fax system and CNN was allowed to be aired” the angry media had damned his wife Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto for doing it. “She was hesitant… As journalists you know the impact of technology. Because of this, the establishment will never be able to hide itself again. All that we need as a democracy is perseverance and time.
Indeed, one of the impressive achievements in the sphere of restoring faith in democratic institutions has been the empowerment of the media which had notoriously been subjected to unwanted pressures which over the years caused a diminution of its strength as a vibrant democratic tool. He did try to infuse his foreign policy with renewed energy to build bridges with all its regional neighbours. His reach stretched from Teheran to New Delhi to China although Indo-Pak relations at the moment are passing through a predictable low. Almost unnoticed by anyone he handed over the Gwadar port project in Baluchistan to China, Pakistan’s “all-weather friend”.
The annoying pressure of the judiciary and the military has been very much a part and parcel of the civilian government all these past five years, substantially hampering the Zardari dispensation to break any fresh ground, apart from keeping the civilian government stable, beating back efforts by the judiciary and the Army to get it unsettled.
The military has been busy combating terror in the cities and insurgency in Baluchistan, fighting off attacks on military assets by the Pakistani Tehreek-e-Taliban. The military regardless of the positive outcome in Afghanistan has had to live with the embarrassment of having had Osama bin Laden killed in its very backyard in Abbotabad.
One hopes – and you can never be sure – that the military will have learnt by now that it must allow democratic continuity in the country, sure in the knowledge that they can tweak foreign and security policies without owning responsibility for it.
A few weeks before the polls Zardari, Mr 10 percent of Pakistan, has tough battles ahead, what with the formidable Sharif Brothers of West Punjab in full cry and yet somehow not as much in command of the situation as they would have wished. The Bhuttos, father and daughter, both deceased, did undoubtedly have considerable pockets of strength in Punjab. The family does still retain these pockets of influence in Southern Punjab. It remains to be seen if Zardari’s succeeds in persuading his and Benazir’s son Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, to return to the campaign which he withdrew from two weeks ago. The 24-year-old Bilawal is a bright lad and perhaps with a different understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the men and women who constitute the People’s Party leadership now.
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