`WHEN the nation is about to be declared a failed state,` asks embattled Pervez Musharraf, `tell me whether?so-called democracy is important or efforts to save the country?`
After saving the country for the last eight years he obviously wants to do it all over again.
If memory serves, the primary excuse for his first coup in Oct 1999 was the same chestnut: that
Pakistan was about to be declared a failed state.
As self-indictments go this is quite a devastating one. But in his present saviour-mode Musharraf can`t be expected to have much time for such fine distinctions
-Excerpts from the column of Ayaz Amir, an respected Pakistani political observer.
`Have you thought of (resigning)?` asks Sky News. The answer: `But should it be given up now and we will have better Pakistan, a stabler Pakistan and we could have very good elections, without me? Very good, maybe I take that decision, OK?` (No kidding, the very words.)
As the BBC Urdu Service`s Mohammad Hanif observes (in his hilarious `The case of Musharraf and the drunk uncle`), `Musharraf deserves our sympathy. Not because he has been forced to carry out a coup against his own regime, not because his troops are being kidnapped en masse by Pakistani Taliban and then awarded Rs500 for good behaviour, not because he himself has become a prisoner in his Army House and can`t even nip out for coffee and paan as he used to, but because he has utterly lost his grip over grammar!`
Musharraf may have done the nation a final service by lifting the last veil of illusion from Benazir Bhutto who now says, after a somewhat longish journey into the kingdom of make-believe, she will have no truck with him and their ways have parted. Better late than never.
The luckiest thing to have ever happened to Musharraf was not American aid post-Sep 11 but the dithering, weak-kneed opposition he has enjoyed, his dictatorship made easy first by Nawaz Sharif`s un-seasonal pilgrimage to the Holy Land in Dec 2000, then by the support of the religious parties at the time of the 17th Amendment (sanctifying his rule) in 2003 and, last of all, the purported deal with Benazir Bhutto under American sponsorship. Hopefully this is now over.
Anyone could have told Musharraf it was not in his interest to burn his bridges with Bhutto. But when paranoia takes over, as it has nowadays in the corridors of power, subtlety is an early casualty.
Credit must also be given to Bhutto for finally being able to read which way the wind is blowing. Siding with Musharraf now would be worse than political suicide.
Even our American godfathers are getting frustrated with him because he is getting nothing right. Indeed, after Mar 9 almost everything he has done has turned into a blunder, the action of Nov 3 of course qualifying for a higher title: catastrophe.
But wailing alone availeth nothing.
Dictators don`t give up power easily. They go not when their time is up, they being notoriously insensible to the march of time, but when the issue is forced. When anger boils over and becomes an unstoppable political movement.
Musharraf will do all he can to remain in power. Of this we can be sure. What will the forces claiming to speak on the people`s behalf do? That is the important question.
