Military dictatorships in Pakistan make for interesting and intriguing case studies. Starting from Gen Yahya Khan to Gen Pervez Musharraf, the evolution is punctuated with chicanery, machinations and collusions. Gen Yahya, the stocky Pashtun, who in many ways led the roadmap to the carving of the country into Bangladesh, was -- by the country's standards -- the fairest and therefore also the most naïve. He set the precedent of sacking democratically elected governments, ejecting his benefactor President Ayub Khan who had paved the way for his promotion to the country's highest army post. Gen Zia, the scheming Punjabi on the other hand, was wilier but he never made secret of his dislike for then President Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Rationalizing his elevation as the President on the Doctrine of Necessity after what is believed to be a "judicial murder" of the rabble rouser Bhutto, Zia cleverly Islamised the country to remove any misgiving the world community had on the Two-nation Theory. (That in India it continues to spark an animated and fierce debate is another story). The Delhi-born Gen Musharraf seemed to have learnt his lessons from the experience of his predecessors. The feisty man turned out to be the most insidious and greasy. Even as he trampled democratic institutions, turned the judicial system into a kangaroo court, he brought a PR polish to his administration. While systematically getting his detractors out of the way, including the "reasonable" Nawaz Sharif, he made out a specious case of how his elevation and presence at the helm was fundamental(ist) to Pakistan's turbulent existence. Unlike, Yahya and Zia, Musharraf had an air of sophistication to him, what with his frequent claims of Kemal Ataturk of Turkey as his idol.
There is a, however, a common chord in this long story of deviousness and subterfuge. The reign of most dictators eventually comes to an end with not-so-happy ending. Yahya and Zia didn't exactly die in very graceful circumstances and Musharraf, who is still fighting like the true blue army general, has now the mortification of seeing Sharif at the helm again while the courts that he once used as his dummies now hounding him out. Nemesis catches up and how.
When the tide turned against him, Musharraf "exiled" and fled to London only to return and profess his love for his motherland where detractors Zardari, Imran Khan and Benazir are sharpening their knives against him. By all accounts, Musharraf is a survivor if the balancing acts that he did at the domestic and international levels are any indication. The Sharif government seems to be a little soft on him and doesn't want to rush into his exit. Not surprisingly therefore, reports are emanating from the neighbouring country that he might get a safe passage but astute that he is, Musharraf wants to fight it out with the support of the outfit that he has floated and begin on a clean slate. For Sharif, it seems to be a case of once-bitten-twice-shy. One suspects a stage-managed farce being enacted to push Musharraf into leaving the country but the all powerful military establishment seems to have other ideas. Musharraf, the first military ruler in Pakistan's history to be tried in court, has expectedly rejected all the charges levelled against him, including treason and the pitch is queered by the fact that the country's civilian and army establishments stare at the prospects of being at loggerheads again.
In my blog dated April 11, 2013, I had written:
For his sheer propensity for the holier than thou, one needs to hand it to former president and general Pervez Musharraf. If you ignored the man's chameleonic character, Musharraf, who fled Pakistan to return after four years of "self imposed exile", has proclaimed with his usual bluster that "I am among those people who think of the country and the citizens." His precise timing to return to his troubled homeland shows just that, albeit in a contradictory manner.
Behind the army demeanor, there lurks a hard-core politician. Aware of the rebuffs that dot his path, he has already met with a few. His nomination papers were rejected for his acts of "reason and corruption", a clause Indian electoral system could well draw from. But howsoever Musharraf wants to propagandize his love for Pakistan, no one is hoodwinked into believing that and the man has landed back on his home soil because he hardly had any option. He is obviously trying to make a virtue of his compulsion.There are a string of cases lined up against him. Having trampled all institutions during his cleverly manipulative regime, he is everybody's burden. Elevating such a man at the helm again is fraught with the consequences Pakistani people may not try to experiment with.
Take it. This is a do-or-die battle for Musharraf. He will be consigned to the dustbin of history if his outfit fails to come to power.
