ISLAMABAD, 7 October 2007 — For an insight into why Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf wants to continue to hold on power, his stated leadership models say it all — Napoleon Bonaparte and Richard Nixon.
Despite plummeting popularity, Gen. Musharraf sought another five years as president in an election held yesterday having positioned himself as a key ally in the US-led “war on terror.”
Musharraf has employed the French emperor’s soldierly plain speaking and the late US president’s reliance on realpolitik in equal measure since he seized power without firing a shot on Oct. 12, 1999.
Since then he has portrayed himself as both his nuclear-armed nation’s savior from itself and, since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, as the world’s bulwark against the menace of Al-Qaeda.
His opponents are more apt to say that after failing to restore full democracy and presiding over eight years of military rule he has fallen victim to the thought that he is indispensable.
“He suffers from a highly inflated image of himself,” said Talat Masood, a former general-turned-political analyst who has called for a transition to civilian rule.
“All military rulers eventually think that they are the savior, that without them the state will collapse and that they are destined to play that role,” Masood said.
A moderate, Musharraf has won some praise for trying to tackle extremism and presiding over resulting record growth that has made Pakistan one of the world’s fastest expanding economies.
He has also encouraged an exponential increase in electronic and other media. And he has undeniably shown courage in what has been dubbed the world’s most dangerous job, one that has seen him escape at least three assassination attempts by Osama Bin Laden’s extremist network.
Talking about the bids to kill him on his official website, Musharraf says: “I call myself ‘Lucky.’ Napoleon had said, besides all qualities a leader has to be lucky to succeed. Therefore, I must succeed.”
Musharraf, a former commando, has also referred to Napoleon in several interviews. But Masood said that Musharraf’s frequent insistence that he should stay in office to free his country’s 160 million people from militancy was a misconception.
“To say that he is the one who can fight the war on terror is just absurd, it is the other way round. Someone else is needed to generate vitality and harness the forces which would counter the forces of terrorism,” he said.
Musharraf has said that he will give up his position as army chief by Nov. 15 if he wins the vote.
Musharraf was born in Old Delhi on Aug. 11, 1943 and his family moved to the newly-created Pakistan shortly after independence four years later.
He joined the Pakistan Military Academy aged 18 and became a commando in 1966 but admitted that “my bluntness and indiscipline landed me in many a serious trouble” until his marriage in 1968. He now has a son and a daughter.
On Oct. 7, 1998 then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif appointed him chief of staff.
Amid political tensions, Sharif tried to sack Musharraf when the general was on an airliner returning from Sri Lanka a year later, triggering what Musharraf calls his “countercoup.” The premier ordered the jet not to land in Pakistan but Musharraf’s fellow generals arrested Sharif and took over Karachi airport, where the plane landed with only seven minutes of fuel left.
With no experience of civilian leadership Musharraf was forced to rely on political allies - and a little research, with him citing Nixon’s book “Leaders” as one of his favorite.
The famously decisive Musharraf is also said to be fond of quoting Nixon’s aphorism “paralysis through analysis.”
Musharraf received an unexpected boost after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, when his abandonment of support for Afghanistan’s Taleban regime made him a fully-fledged ally of Washington. But his pledges to restore democracy appeared hollow to some of the politicians.
He won a five-year term as president in an April 2002 referendum. In 2004 he reneged on a subsequent promise that he would quit as army chief.
Yet Musharraf faced no serious political challenges until March 9 this year, when he tried to sack the country’s independent-minded chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry.
