Opinion

Take the Exit Ramp
By Ahmad Faruqui
Dansville, CA

Last week’s general elections brought with them a sense of déjà vu. Like those of 1970, they represented an epochal moment in history.
There are many similarities between the two elections. A military dictator who had ruled for several years was in denial about his unpopularity. He viewed himself as the savior of the nation, a man who had brought democracy to the nation, the kind that suited “the genius of the people.” Early in his rule, the general found it convenient to create a political party to give himself legitimacy. Called the Pakistan Muslim League (Convention), it was designed to evoke the warm and fuzzy feelings of being the party of the nation’s founder, M. A. Jinnah.
Over time, the people came to view PML (C) as the source of all evil and to see its leaders as corrupt and incompetent. But the people were powerless to dislodge it while tyranny reigned. This party was dealt a mortal blow in the general elections of 1970. Two other secular parties swept the polls, changing completely the political landscape. The religious parties made a very poor showing and one essentially exited the political scene.
There are, of course, a few dissimilarities between 1970 and 2008. The first military dictator was hounded out of office a year prior to the elections by a people’s revolt. Saying that he could “not preside over the destruction of his country,” Field Marshal Ayub Khan stepped down from office. But instead of handing over power to the speaker of the House, he handed it over to the army chief, General Yahya Khan.
Some parallels can also be drawn between last week’s elections with those that were held 20 years ago. During his 11-year tenure, General Zia advanced the concept of party-less elections but found that even those gave too much rein to his hand-picked prime minister. So one day he fired him and promised new elections. But a plane crash prevented him from carrying through his promise. His successor as army chief decided to honor the promise. These did not yield any sympathy vote for Zia’s camp followers. They were routed and a secular democratic government led by Benazir Bhutto was sworn in.
Despite his intimate familiarity with Pakistani history, General Musharraf proceeded to legitimize his rule by creating a political base around another offshoot of Ayub’s party, the PML (Quaid). This party was routed so conclusively last week that it is difficult not to think of it as PML (Quit). Most of its stalwarts are gone. The religious parties which won a sizeable number of seats in the controversial elections of 2002 are gone and a coalition of secular parties will form the government.
But unlike Ayub (and so much like Yahya), the newly retired General Musharraf has displayed no intention of leaving office. Musharraf would like to bask in the glory of holding free and fair elections. But did he have a choice? There is plenty of evidence that he had planned to rig the elections. The caretaker government was anything but neutral and the Election Commission was suspect.
But pressure from Washington compelled him to change his plans. Had he still engaged in massive rigging, not only would he have drawn Washington’s ire but also evoked ugly street protests. He knew that if the “agitators” caused the country to come to a standstill, the army would distance itself from him. Without its protection, he would not last a day in office.
Ironically, hard-core Musharraf loyalists are still giving him credit for holding free and fair elections. This Pavlovian reflex is akin to thanking a habitual offender for not carrying out a new crime.
These people found justification in Musharraf’s suspension of the Chief Justice on the 9th of March and supported Musharraf yet again when the Supreme Court restored the Chief Justice in July because it was a tribute to Musharraf’s magnanimity. Amazingly, they supported him a few months later when he made a U-turn and essentially shut down the Court when it threatened to overturn his re-election. Not surprisingly, they accepted at face value his pronouncements in Europe that Pakistan was a tribal society and that it would take years to make it a democracy.
These people will never be convinced that it is time for the ex-general to go. To them, he is the embodiment of truth, the doer of all good things, the prince of enlightened moderation without whom Pakistan would return to the Dark Ages.
It is time for them, and for Musharraf, to wake up and realize that the game is over. Everything Musharraf stood for was repudiated on the 18th of February. The electoral results have made it clear, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the people do not wish to see Musharraf holding court on radio and television day in and day out. Aitzaz Ahsan spoke for millions when he said, “Musharraf is the most hated man in Pakistan.”
During the last several months, poll after poll showed Musharraf’s popularity plummeting like a lead coin in a bottomless well. But he continued to reject the polls by saying that they only represented the views of a few thousand people and asserted vainly that he was vastly popular in the populous countryside.
But even the King’s Party was not taken in by the myths spun out by the monarch. It knew that once rigging was no longer an option, its fate was sealed. Why else would they seek to obtain the release of one of the key instigators of the Lal Masjid takeover, Abdul Aziz, just days prior to the vote? This was an obvious ploy designed to play on the religious sympathies of the people and to garner much needed votes. How else could one justify releasing a real and confirmed terrorist from jail while holding the nation’s eminent justices and barristers under house arrest?
Musharraf had said not too long ago that he would step down when he saw that the people were no longer with him. He said he was continuing as president only because it was in the national interest. He would rather be playing golf or tennis, he noted, but the situation required him to sacrifice his personal interests.
Well, the time has now come for him to do the nation a favor and quit. He would also be doing himself a big favor by taking the exit ramp while it is still visible. There are countless examples in world history when dictators have found it impossible to find the exit ramp and ended up hitting the barrier at the end of the road.
(Ahmad Faruqui has authored “Rethinking the national security of Pakistan.” Faruqui@pacbell.net)

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