We are in Iraq to promote democracy, right? Isn’t that what President Bush has been saying?
So, what about this maneuver from an erstwhile ally?
Authorities rounded up opposition leaders Sunday after military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf suspended Pakistan’s constitution, replaced the chief judge and blacked out independent TV outlets, saying the country must fight rising Islamic extremism.
Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup but had given a conditional pledge to step down as military chief and become a civilian president this year, declared a state of emergency Saturday night, dashing recent hopes of a smooth transition to democracy for the nuclear-armed nation.
“Gen. Musharraf’s second coup,” said the headline in the Dawn daily. “It is martial law,” said the Daily Times.
Across Pakistan, police arrested political activists and lawyers at the forefront of a campaign against military rule.
Among those detained were Javed Hashmi, the acting president of the party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif; Asma Jehangir, chairman of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan; and Hamid Gul, former chief of the country’s main intelligence agency and a staunch critic of Musharraf’s support of the U.S.-led war on terror.
“It’s a big blow to the country,” said Gul, as a dozen officers took him away in a police van near the parliament in the capital, Islamabad. Hashmi said the army general would not “not survive the people’s outrage.”
Up to 40 activists were hauled in when police raided the office of the Human Right Commission of Pakistan, including its director, I.A. Rahman, a harsh Musharraf critic, said Mohammed Yousaf, a guard at the office in the eastern city of Lahore.
Musharraf’s leadership is threatened by an Islamic militant movement that has spread from border regions to the capital, the reemergence of political rival and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and an increasingly defiant Supreme Court, which was expected to rule soon on the validity of his recent presidential election win. Hearings scheduled for next week were postponed, with no new date set.
Juan Cole, the Middle East expert who writes the Informed Comment blog, refers to this as Musharraf’s “coup-within-a-coup.”
Over his eight years of military dictatorship, he had dressed his government up in the outward trappings of ‘democracy.’ He allowed (stage-managed) parliamentary elections in 2002. The same year, he ran for president in a referendum with no opponent, such that he could not lose.
The Supreme Court ruled against him in his attempt to dismiss the uncooperative chief justice, and the same court had been set to rule on whether he could remain as president (he was just reelected to the post by the stage-managed parliament he had helped install).
Musharraf appears to have concluded that the Supreme Court would rule against him, thus his coup-within-a-coup, which at last throws off the tattered facade of democratic institutions and reveals the naked military tyranny underneath. Pitifully, Musharraf explained that he had to make the coup in order to ensure the transition to democracy he says he began 8 years ago. Apparently the “transition” (i.e. Musharraf’s dictatorship) will last for the rest of his life.
As Josh Marshall says in Talking Points Memo, “this is starting to sound a bit more like military dictatorship …”
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Hank Kalet 