Are There
Any Options for the President?
By Mohammad Ashraf
Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
The May 12 tragic clashes in Karachi,
the worst after the bloody days of early 1990s,
have raised quite a few questions about the effectiveness
of President Musharraf’s government. Has
President Musharraf finally outlived his best?
Is he dented beyond repair? Is he trapped in a
blind alley?
In the words of Dr.Rasul Bakhsh, the head of the
department of social sciences at Lahore University,
“I think he has completely ruined himself”.
The editorial of the Sunday Times presents a similar
view, “The possibility of any compromise
to correct the original mistake has vanished now…
the ante has been upped by the government”.
If the sacking of the Chief Justice, Iftikhar
Chaudhry could be termed as his original mistake
which he made on March 9; then his choice to address
a pro-government rally in front of the National
Assembly while young men died and collapsed right
in front of the camera in Karachi and people in
the rally danced on the beat of drums just to
show-off that he too was popular, is his second
fatal blunder.
A small scale demonstration arranged by the fraternity
of lawyers against the President’s March
9 action, if left alone, would have died its death.
But things snow-balled because the President didn’t
listen to his inner instinct as much as he heeded
to the time-servers’ lofty claims, “All
is moonshine”. The result is obvious. 41
people died on May 12 and May 13, while the government
stood like a fire-brigade, waiting for the fire
to start and do the damage before it could come
into action. In the words of “Dawn”
“troops had suddenly disappeared from the
troubled spots.”
According to the BBC’s Shoaib Hassan, five
of those killed on Sunday in Karachi were kidnapped,
and then executed. One of them was an MQM worker.
Another two were tortured and then shot in the
head. Allegations leveled against the government,
MQM, Jamait-i-Islami, Sindh administration, and
the fraternity of lawyers, are alarming. “Why
did the police and the paramilitary Rangers fail
to take action to prevent the carnage? Who ordered
the barricading of the city’s main artery
and several other roads and for what purpose?
Who were the heavily armed groups of armed men
wandering about boisterously around the city on
that fateful day? What was achieved by preventing
the chief justice’s reception at the Sindh
High Court bar? Is there any truth in the MQM,
the ruling party in Karachi, as being part of
a sinister conspiracy? These are some of the questions
that have been highlighted by the News International
of Karachi.
The Nation of Lahore also raises a very legitimate
question: “The poor arrangements, or rather
lack of them, by the government to maintain law
and order in the face of dire warnings by political
analysts are incomprehensible”. The Daily
Times of Lahore draws attention to another festering
ulcer when it states, “Instead of coming
back from behind his cover and sorting out the
threatening Mullahs of Islamabad, he attacked
the chief justice of Pakistan. When the lawyers
came out to protest all over the country he was
angry and began to plan ways of sorting them out.
The contrast was breathtaking.”
The daily Jang observes, “The protection
of the life and property of citizens is the responsibility
of the state. If such conditions are created where
this is not possible, what is the common man supposed
to do?” Will it be wrong to say that the
country is in the grip of a feeling of Déjà
vu, living with a feeling all the time that either
you are directly a victim of terrorism, or are
experiencing one psychologically. Is the country,
thus, being readied for another bout of Martial
Law?
Analyst Nasim Zehra puts the entire blame on the
government when she says, “The government
needs to be condemned as much as possible. A new
thing happened this time. The government just
chose to stay absent from the scene.” Mr.
Kanwar Idris, a former Chief Secretary of Sindh,
raised a few other questions, “This time
the government mixed politics with the law and
order situation… Where were the nazims to
check the riots?” Well, they were in Islamabad
busy in offering flower bouquets to the PM and
the President. In his opinion, the President has
lost his credibility and effectiveness. He needs
to re-align himself, and look for new adjustments.
He really is in a blind alley.
ARE THERE ANY OPTIONS LEFT
FOR THE PRESIDENT?
The BBC’s Barbara Plett, stationed in Islamabad
thinks that “his room for maneuver is limited.
However, the emerging consensus is that the President
has four options:
• Ride out the crisis in the hope that the
protests run out of steam (the Karachi and Lahore
tempo portends a different scenario)
• Accept that he had been wrongly advised,
reinstate the chief justice, and look for a scapegoat
(Abdul Razzaq Theam has already begun the search).
• Declare a state of emergency and impose
martial law ( that means complete isolation and
disaster).
• Reach out to the Pakistan People’s
Party (PPP) of Benazir Bhutto, generally seen
as the most popular political force in the country.
(The blueprint of such a deal is already afloat,
but it will not work without the inclusion of
Nawaz Sharif’s party)
Add to these two more options:
• Constitute a national government, which
is inclusive of all parties, consisting of people
who vow not to contest the 2008 elections.
• The president announces his retirement
as army chief; rids himself of those who, as he
contends, had framed the reference against the
chief justice, and allows the leaders in exile
to come to the country, and dispels the public
perception that he is Altaf Hussain’s man.
The people of Pakistan could easily have forgotten
his act of taking over the government through
military force in 1999 if they had been happy
at the end of his close to eight years absolute
rule. As he can see they are not; nor is the West,
not even America.
The post 5/12 carnage might have drowned people’s
outcry against power outrages, load-shedding,
and lack of drinkable water, for the time being,
but that does not mean that the problems have
been solved. Two suicidal attacks on him in as
many weeks in December 2003, one on his PM, and
one on his interior minister on April 28, foretell
one thing: the militants can attack anybody, anytime
and anywhere. Who is then safe in Pakistan? Personal
safety precedes all other considerations.
May be this small Greek anecdote offers him a
solution. A Roman ruler once discovered that one
of his governors was corrupt, inefficient and
negligent in the performance of his duties. He
conducted an inquiry and found that the charges
leveled were true. He called him back, and as
punishment ordered that he be skinned alive, and
a cushion of his skin be made and placed on the
seat he sat on. Then he called his son and appointed
him as governor in place of his father, but with
a note: ‘Never forget the cushion you would
be sitting on”. Did President Musharraf
ever write such a note to some of the “sons”
in his cabinet? And is it not ironic that he,
too, is occupying the same seat which once was
occupied by General Zia, Gen. Yahya Khan and Gen.
Ayub Khan.
It is hoped that he is not passing through the
phase they passed at the end of their rules. He
still can turn the wheel in the right direction,
if he wants to.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
