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Why Did Pakistan Reject Its "Savior"?
Al-Hayat - 20/08/08//
It's worth reading
Al-Hayat - 20/08/08//
And thus resigned President Pervez Musharraf under the pressure of parliamentary accountability! He resigned years after a rule that has been dubbed a military rule, a dictatorship, a despotic rule that tramples on civil liberties and violates the constitution. If these were the characteristics of the former army commander and the former president of the country, how then could he fear parliamentary accountability? In other words, why did he approve the return of his opponents from exile and agree to hold the general elections on schedule even though he knew that the electoral outcome would be against him with his opponents enjoying unequivocal popular support?
Musharraf was not merely a general aspiring to rule. He had a plan to modernize Pakistan. His project that rested on the military establishment was intended to restructure the political system on the basis of limiting the influence of traditional powers, especially the Pakistan Peoples Party, traditionally headed by the Bhutto clan, and the Pakistan Muslim League, the wing of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The project also aimed at limiting the escalating and growing fundamental current whose confrontation intertwined with the war on terror.
The other face of this project was confronting the economic crisis, and on this level, relative successes were achieved before they were lost to the recent global crisis. In addition, the project intended to assert Pakistan's sovereignty in the traditional standoff with India, to avoid armed conflict with India and to reach peaceful settlements over pending issues, especially in Kashmir.
This project gradually took shape since Musharraf's bloodless coup against Nawaz Sharif at the end of the 1990s after a period of political turbulences resulting from the major confrontation between the late Benazir Bhutto and the government, not to mention the political trials that were launched in the name of combating the very corruption in which Nawaz Sharif and his followers were engaged, all while the military establishment was enjoying a freehand granted by its almost absolute sponsorship of the Afghani situation and its Pakistani ramifications. With his new project, Musharraf represented himself as the "savior" who would rescue the country from this prevailing deterioration, especially that there were no guarantees that the domestic quarrels would not slip into a general state of chaos that could threaten the state's control over nuclear weapons or the transfer of such control into the hands of radical fundamentalists. All this alarmed the West, which endorsed Musharraf as a guarantee against such a threat.
Yet, this project also carried the seeds of its own failure. On the one hand, the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League Quaid-e-Azam (PML-Q) failed to form a political force capable of attracting support and initiating leadership. On the other hand, both modern and liberal currents failed to create a parallel force as an alternative to traditional powers.
Amidst the unprecedented revival of fundamentalist forces, Musharraf who was seeking electoral legitimacy could find no other choice but to enlist the help of the traditional forces he had previously faced. Hence came the reconciliation project through which Bhutto and later on Sharif returned to the country. For a while, it seemed that Musharraf would be the backbone of this reconciliation. But the assassination of the Peoples Party leader undermined this project and pit the former Pakistani president against the Peoples Party which inferred to the involvement of Musharraf in the assassination, especially given the grudges between the two sides since the coup d'état led by General Zia-ul-Haq that ousted Ali Bhutto and ended in hanging him to death. Similarly, Musharraf found himself in the face of Sharif; the latter returned to avenge his ousting and imprisonment at the hands of Musharraf who later on had him exiled.
At the same time, Musharraf failed to convince his people that his involvement in the war against terror was in Pakistan's interest in the first place. Given the haphazard nature of the American war, the fundamentalist escalation at home, and the military response in the north-western regions, Pakistan's contribution to the war on terror seemed as a war against Muslims. This perception was further worsened by the failure to offer a developmental socio-political solution in the regions where the radical fundamentalists sought a safe haven.
Once it became clear that Musharraf's head was wanted by a wide sector of the Pakistanis who have been devastated by the recent economic crises, by the manipulation of the law and the constitution, and by marginalization, the "savior" was left with one option: to leave, especially since months earlier, he had voluntarily given up the tools that would have allowed him to stay as a dictator.
It's worth reading
