generalspeaking

Returning to Pakistan

Quite the instructional; Pakistani politicians who attain high office have immense power while in office. Once they are removed from office through a coup or some semblance of a democratic election process they are moved to depart the country for asylum, for their new condition invariably means they are required to go into political exile.

The alternative all too often being a choice between death or being charged by the Pakistani high court for conspiracy or criminal mismanagement, political corruption, or ordering the death of an opponent.

Why Pakistani politicians, once removed from office for whatever reason do eventually decide to return to Pakistan with the intention of presenting themselves once again, as fresh new candidates for high office represents a real head-scratcher.

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's father Zalfikar Ali Bhutto, who brought nuclear weapon production to Pakistan was unseated by a rival politician who then assumed the Presidency of the country and imposed a death sentence by hanging on Bhutto.

Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq was a brutal dictator who introduced Islamist fundamentalism to Pakistan. He was hated by Benazir Bhutto who became prime minister of the country on two non-successive occasions before she was deposed on charges of corruption and fled the country. She decided to return to Pakistan while Prime Minister Pervez Musharraf was Prime Minister, a general who had succeeded to that office through a coup unseating Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.Benazir Bhutto meant to run against Mr. Musharraf in scheduled elections but she was assassinated. Her husband, popularly referred to as "Mr. 6%", because of his purported penchant for corruption while she was in office, ran to replace her representing her father's old party, the Pakistan People's Party and won the presidency and remains in that office.

Her return from exile destroyed her, but she felt compelled to run for office again. It is popularly thought that their son, being educated in Britain, will eventually lead the PPP.

Nawaz Sharif too made the decision to return from exile. And he ran successfully for prime minister. Pervez Musharraf decided it was his turn to return to Pakistan, as ill-advised as that would seem to have been. He planned to run again for office. But he had once dismissed the supreme court justices causing the country's lawyers to rise against him in protest.

And it would seem that the animosity he had created among them then has come back to fatally bite him.

A court in Rawalpindi near Islamabad filed three charges against Mr. Musharraf. Murder and conspiracy to murder among them. He claims the charges are politically motivated, pleaded not guilty, and he is quite correct in his assessment, but it doesn't appear it will help to take him out of the dilemma his return has created for him. He is charged with the assassination in 2007 of Benazir Bhutto.

A retired general, Rashid Qureshi, former aide to Musharraf characterizes the charges as "totally ridiculous". "There is no proof in the charges they have made. This is how the judiciary takes revenge", he claimed. Correctly, without doubt. A claim was made that Mr. Musharraf had threatened Ms. Bhutto before she returned to Pakistan.

When Ms. Bhutto was travelling in Rawalpindi after leaving an election rally she was in an armoured vehicle. But waving to the crowd, she appeared above the open top of the vehicle, and as she did, there was a bomb launched at the vehicle and a gun shot rang out, hitting her in the temple. In the ensuing turmoil a former head of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud was blamed for the assassination.

"We have no reason to question that", Michael Hayden, then head of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States affirmed. Mr. Musharraf, a former ally of the United States, promising that he and his government were committed to battling Islamist extremism, while members of the Pakistan military and secret intelligence services were involved in training, arming and supporting the Afghan Taliban fighting NATO allies in Afghanistan, was warned not to return to his country.

His old rival, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry who had lead a protest movement against Mr. Musharraf in 2007 that had contributed to his downfall, is obviously involved in the charges brought against his old nemesis, including a charge of treason.

Labels: Crisis Politics, Islamism, Pakistan

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, August 22, 2013