Is 9/10 going to be Pakistans 9/11?
Most people in Pakistan know that a new phase of dangerous confrontation between the government and the opposition will start on September 10. But few know the extent of its potential destructiveness. Unfortunately, a lot of articulated opinion is in favour of the confrontation or face-off. Narrowing the focus on the long-standing issue of civil-military relations, the protagonists of the struggle for democracy are prepared to wage the war on the basis of the motto let the chips fall where they may.
In this looming confrontation, it is scary to contemplate the experience of the state apparatus in recent years of handling public agitation. These days half a city can be burned down without the government going into any pangs of conscience. Sometimes, it even allows destruction of property and disruption of economic activity in the expectation that ordinary people whose lives are disrupted will be riled against the protesters. Thus the PML government is getting ready to confront the APDM threat of violence and is taking measures that may further negatively affect its standing among the people.
What is additional in the situation is the new-found confidence of the Supreme Court to hand down judgements without regard to government pressure. This changes the nature of the confrontation. It is no longer political party activists who will get baton-charged on the roads, but an apolitical movement of the professional classes led by lawyers who are ready to face the governments wrath on the streets. The only class really worried is the trading and business class of the country. It fears for its assets and it fears the people too as they misunderstand the imperatives of the national economy.
The Sharifs are adamant that they will land in Islamabad on September 10. Their party has organised itself for the welcome and, from past record, one can safely guess that the welcome will be significant in the sense of the disruption it will cause and show up the government as an unpopular entity. It is a measure of the governments jitters that they have imposed Section 144 in Rawalpindi forbidding the assembly of five or more people. And it is swooping down strangely on the motorcycles which are the ride of the lower middle classes.
The government has also controversially moved the anti-terrorism court (ATC) against Mr Shehbaz Sharif for killing people through a police encounter when he was chief minister of Punjab, and obtained arrest warrants. It has, however, failed to obtain such warrants against Mr Nawaz Sharif from an accountability court judge who says he will issue them upon the arrival of the accused. The idea is to arrest the PMLN leaders as they arrive and put them behind bars on one pretext or another.
It is when the government tries to deport them that it might violate the Supreme Court verdict confirming their right to return to Pakistan. The idea is to bundle them out to Saudi Arabia after which the Saudis have apparently taken responsibility to restrain them till 2010. In a TV discussion on September 7, the PML chief, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, said the flight carrying the Sharifs could be diverted and added that there were many additional ways of preventing the leaders from arriving in Pakistan which he was not willing to disclose.
Meanwhile, the government has waited till the time was close to the Sharifs arrival to round up the PMLN mid-level leaders most likely to show their organisational talent. The arrests have been challenged in court. Meanwhile, the ruling PML is strong in Punjab and is deploying its own party and administration in the districts that lie along the Rawalpindi-Lahore route that the Sharifs are planning to stump through addressing large crowds and raising the temperature against the government. The Jamaat-e Islami and Imran Khans Insaf Party have also announced that their workers would join the PMLN crowds, so has Balochistans Jamhoori Watan Party whose leader Nawab Akbar Bugti was killed last year.
At the same time the Supreme Court has been moved against President Musharrafs attempt to get himself re-elected. The movers are the political parties and the Pakistan Lawyers Forum and the idea is to get the apex court to add a legal dimension to the struggle being waged for democracy. On the other hand, the government, deeply divided and politically near-sighted, has relied on a visit by Saad Hariri, the son of the late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, to try and give it the moral authority it lacks. Meanwhile, the railways minister, Sheikh Rashid, has come around to saying that the Musharraf-PPP deal is finally off because the president said no to Ms Bhuttos demand that she be allowed to become prime minister for the third time.
If the confrontation goes ahead and the legal and political battle is joined, the government is bound to go for Emergency or even martial law; and after that no one knows which way the country will go. *
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan
