Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, who wound up his campaign at a rally in Karachi yesterday prior to tomorrow’s controversial referendum, has had a bruising initiation into the realities of the political life since launching his bid to win his countrymen’s hearts and minds.
When the general seized power in a bloodless coup two and a half years ago, the national reaction was one of stoical calm. Pakistan has had so many dictators — half its short life since independence it has been ruled by the military — that for most people this was mere, sober normality after the sickening roller coaster ride of democracy.
One well-placed military analyst said that Musharraf was the last person in the world he would have expected to become a military dictator — because he had no prior connection to politics, no political axe to grind. He was a soldier’s soldier, a former commando, a proactive, hands-on general. The slime and slither and haggle of politics was a million miles from his experience.
But see the transformation today. Musharraf steps out in starched turbans and dazzling white, high-buttoned sherwani coats; city walls are adorned with oversize murals of him in army uniform, fists raised in triumph.
He no longer confines himself to grim-faced television addresses to the nation or cosy seminars with the nation’s movers and shakers. Instead he has thousands of regular folks bused in from the villages to attend his rallies, many of whom, it is darkly hinted, have been paid to attend.
The transformation is startling. Musharraf has been forced to repackage himself this way because the Supreme Court insists that a general election must be held — democracy must return to Pakistan — in October. Musharraf, who has ruled out a return to Pakistani politics of the two leaders, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, who command real popular support, both of whom he accuses of massive corruption, has made it clear that he intends to carry on as president long after the election, to serve out his five-year term, at the very least.
But his “presidency” was a gift to himself; and as things stood, with no popular mandate in which to wrap himself, he foresaw the danger of constant challenges, post-October, by the elected government. He has sought to forestall this by getting his own victory in first.
The attempt has raised howls of protest from practically all political parties, and has even persuaded the oldest enemies in Pakistani politics, the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League, to bury the hatchet.
The newspapers, much freer than they were under the last democratically elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, have been uninhibitedly venomous in their assaults on Musharraf’s ambitions.
At the very end of the campaign, things have started to swing the general’s way: On Saturday the Supreme Court ruled that the referendum was constitutionally valid.
And yesterday he confirmed his critics’ fears when he said that if he won the referendum (and the result is hardly in doubt) he would consider a further five year term. (The Independent)
