News
Thursday, February 23, 2012
PPP dares Musharraf to warn detractors* Ruling party kicks off polls campaign with frontal attack on former president, his aides
By Muhammad Akram
LAHORE: The ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has kicked off its election campaign with a frontal attack on former military dictator Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf and his erstwhile in-uniform aides, accusing them in a plain-worded charge sheet of having being hand in gloves in the assassination of twice-elected former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
“The charge sheet against Pervez Musharraf and his associates, serving and retired officials of intelligence agencies and members of terrorist organisations is a well-thought move on part of the party before it is going into elections,” revealed a senior member of Prime Minister Gilani’s cabinet.
The PPP leader from Sindh told Daily Times that the party has to address the issue before the elections as it can ill afford going to masses empty handed on the murder of Benazir Bhutto.
The veteran party leader said on the condition of anonymity that government had treaded on a hard path to extract and subsequently divulge what it had gathered on the murder of Benazir Bhutto against a hostile security and intelligence establishment and other state institutions.
The PPP leader said the revealed charge sheet against Musharraf has laid the ground for future actions against all the accused involved, and if voted to power again, the party would be in a commanding position to dictate term in an atmosphere less hostile towards civilian setup as compared to the one on its last leg.
The party leader said there could be no better platform than the Sindh Assembly as the party detractors – the nationalists – were giving the party a tough time in interior Sindh than any other part of the country.
The PPP sources said the top party leadership has all along been advised by local and foreign friends against taking any action against Musharraf in Benazir murder case, seeing a direct clash of interest with security establishment whose numerous members had taken orders from Musharraf on all his acts of omission and commission.
However, the party sources said, with security establishment presently in the dock over the missing persons’ case, flared up Balochistan issue and anticipated to be in the witness-box soon in Asghar Khan’s case for unconstitutional acts of manoeuvring country’s politics, the party top brass thought it hit the iron when it was hot.
The sources said the Balochistan issue, particularly in the wake of an otherwise powerless resolution in the US Congress, had brought the role of intelligence agencies to spotlight.
The party has ceased this opportunity to call a spade a spade on the role of intelligence agencies and its erstwhile leadership during the Musharraf regime in the murder of Benazir.
The party sources said no one except the security and intelligence establishment wanted Musharraf to stay away from the country. Musharraf has been reportedly told only recently by the intelligence establishment that his arrival to Pakistan could damage the image of the establishment, which had already been on the receiving end on account of its failures in protecting the country’s strategic interests both inside and outside the country.
The PPP government, which has now announced to involve the Interpol to bring Musharraf back the country, was too against his arrival to Pakistan to pursue a political career since it was in the middle of mending strained ties with the security establishment during the fray of memo case.
A sudden change in the strategy, the sources said, was in fact aimed at launching the attack at a time that suits the party the most when everybody else has almost given up the matter for political reasons.
The party sources said the PPP would like the PML-N to insist on its demand of encompassing the role of intelligence agencies and security establishment in politics during and after the Musharraf regime till to date since it had suffered a lot on the hands of security establishment before and after coming to power in 2008.
The PPP leader sees realignment of political forces in the wake of forthcoming general elections on the line of civilian supremacy over perpetuation of establishment’s control over politics.
The sources see the passage of 20th Amendment as a milestone in the political forces’quest to unshackle the political system from the control of decades old military control.
The sources see Imran Khan’s consistence outburst against 20th Amendment as an expression of forces, which doesn’t like to see political initiatives in the hands of democratic forces.
The engineered yet escalated campaign of newly-formed Defence of Pakistan Council, a conglomerate of 50-plus jihadi and outlaw organisations and political orphans are repeating the same decades-old mantra of country’s security in shambles.
The PPP leader said it is likely that democratic forces develop a broader understanding, sensing the looming dangers to the democratic process at the hands of non-democratic forces and help a democratic transition take place at a given time in the later part of this year.
The observer said the incumbent PPP government might not be in a position to bring Musharraf to justice in Benazir murder case soon. However, the leader said, the party has been able to set the ball rolling on its elections prospects as well as cautioning its detractors of a tough political battle if pressed harder from now until general elections.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk