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Bitter Realization for Musharraf

July 27th, 2009 | 4 Comments

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

Chaudhry Shujaat, the president of the Pakistan Muslim League Q which was created by Musharraf himself, has started to bad mouth Musharraf publicly. How ironic!

There is no question that a coup is always wrong. If we thought otherwise till 1999, we were thoroughly disabused of that notion in entirety by the experience of Musharraf’s rule. Neverthless the events of 9/11, American activities in the region and the eye ball to eye ball conflict with India in 2002-2003 gave Musharraf an excellent opportunity to rise above institutional handicaps and reform Pakistan according to his own professed liberal ideals. His speech of January 12, 2002 professed a liberal and enlightened vision for Pakistan and for this it was placed on the records of the US Congress with laudatory remarks by US legislators. It looked like the Islamic World had a new Ataturk who would restore the second largest Muslim nation to its founding father Jinnah’s ideals. Optimism was infectious and one could not help but be taken by Musharraf’s charisma and promise for change.

And then Musharraf went beserk. Instead of building on his reputation and citing the prevailing situation in the world to seek more time to implement more fully his secular vision he went on to hold a highly questionable general election which was manipulated to allow the pro-Musharraf PMLQ-Q win. While there were many capable men and women who rallied around Musharraf’s liberal agenda as well as people of integrity like Imran Khan who thought at the time that Musharraf was sincere, he chose to put his bets on Chaudhry Shujaat and his clan from Gujurat to lead his party. Every thing Musharraf did subsequently was a wrong turn based on wrong advice from this clan.

Every progressive action was subsequently retracted. Musharraf decreed that the passport would have no religion column – a restoration of the pre-Zia era when passports were secular documents for travel. He then backed out under pressure from Shujaat. Shujaat interfered with everything from madrassah reform to women’s empowerment bill. The last six years of Musharraf rule were peppered with disappointment after disappointment till he finally fired the Chief Justice and the rest, as they say, is history. Today almost a year after Musharraf’s rule ended, we are still where we were in 1999 or even worse- we are in 1999 without Benazir Bhutto and with Asif Ali Zardari. It just goes to show that a coup-maker may promise you the sun and the moon but the action of stunting constitutional growth means that all of that is a mere illusion.

There we must learn a lesson from this- don’t support coup-makers and be wary of those surround such coup makers for they are even more dangerous.

Written by admin

Filed under: Pakistan · Tags: Ataturk, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, dictatorship, Imran Khan, Jinnah, Musharraf, Musharraf's rule, Pakistan, Taliban

4 Responses to "Bitter Realization for Musharraf"

hossp says:

July 28, 2009 at 7:30 am

For two yrs he was just enjoying himself but in day he turned the corner. If he was a liberal he Would not have waited until two yrs. I don’t think he deserves an article. He is part of the history and should remained buried there.
Javed Ansari says:

July 28, 2009 at 5:48 pm

Mr. Yasser Latif Hamdani has provided quite a fair assessment of where Musharraf went off-track and how he was misled by the opportunists of Gujrat and others for their own narrow-minded ends.
Given that Musharraf came to power through a coup, we must at least give him credit for his sincerity of purpose and his desire to do good for the country. His problem was that he let go almost all the competent people who were around him until before the 2002 elections and allowed himself to be surrounded by all sorts of pretenders and racketeers who were elected to power through a questionable election process. Had Musharraf stuck around without having to go through the election farce, he would have achieved at least some of the objectives he had earlier laid out. The country would have done much better without the sham democracy. After all, Mahathir Mohammad managed to stay in power for 20 years and despite everything that one may say against him, look what he has done for Malaysia!
There are many achievements to Musharraf’s credit i.e. empowering the people at the grassroots level through local government, giving representation to a large number of women in the legislatures and liberalizing the media. Somehow we are afraid to talk about these and many other achievements of the military dictator and are sharpening our claws to pounce upon him as soon as he is thrown into the Supreme Court arena.
bonobashi says:

July 28, 2009 at 6:09 pm

@Javed Ansari

May I disagree very respectfully? The whole point of democracy is that one man’s thinking or weaknesses are not borne by the entire nation. If a public servant is wrong, or seen to be wrong, the people have the power to send him back home.

What you have pointed out about General Musharraf precisely addresses this point. It was because he was a single, fallible man that he fell prey to the sycophancy of all sorts of pretenders and racketeers; a democratically elected ruler might have been equally vulnerable, but he would have been thrown out, not by a popular movement, but by an election. Democracy continues to be the worst possible method of governing, except for all the others.
Hassan1657 says:

July 28, 2009 at 7:22 pm

About Gen Mush, I guess he was an effect and a reflection of how confused, we, as a nation had become. An effect of years of tyranny by the ruthless nexus of Landlords-Mullah-Military. The very roots lie in the first Martial Law of 53 in Lahore, ordered by The defence Secretary, Iskander Mirza(Self Proclaimed Lt Col only by then), Who called Gen Azam for the martial Law, and then there was no end.
People still live in the wrong notion of having sweets distributed across the country when he took over, forgetting that it was a state media stunt (PTV still holds the largest viewership).
What depresses me is that you could still hear voices, mostly of expats, that he was a wonderful opportunity we wasted.
The expat community simply overlooks the fact that they decided to live in these countries just because they have a proper democratic system in force.
the legacy of the Dictators of our time will continue to haunt the very generations of that time..
Losing half of the country
Destroying an essentially secular society
Dragging Pakistan into what they call, the faultline of history now.
We better ” don’t support coup-makers and be wary of those surround such coup makers for they are even more dangerous.”