By Gwynn Dyer
Two things are needed for the current train of events in Pakistan to have a happy ending. One is that ex-general and more-or-less-president Pervez Musharraf accepts his rejection by Pakistan's voters gracefully and leaves office without too much fuss.
"This is the people's verdict against him . . .. He should accept the facts and he should not create hurdles and rifts," as former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf overthrew in 1999, put it. The other necessary condition of a happy outcome is that the White House, Musharraf's enthusiastic backer ever since the terrorist attacks of September, 2001, doesn't try to save him.
Hanging onto the commander-in-chief's job for 10 years, until he was three years past the obligatory retirement age, did not endear Musharraf to his fellow generals, nor was his perceived subservience to American interests popular among them. When the new commander in chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, said after last month's election that the army would stay out of the political process, he probably meant it.
In that case, Musharraf's problems are probably terminal. In the parliamentary elections of Feb. 18 (postponed for six weeks after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December), the ex-general's tame political party, the PML-Q, won only 15 percent...
Full post @ http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_8578177
Two things are needed for the current train of events in Pakistan to have a happy ending. One is that ex-general and more-or-less-president Pervez Musharraf accepts his rejection by Pakistan's voters gracefully and leaves office without too much fuss.
"This is the people's verdict against him . . .. He should accept the facts and he should not create hurdles and rifts," as former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf overthrew in 1999, put it. The other necessary condition of a happy outcome is that the White House, Musharraf's enthusiastic backer ever since the terrorist attacks of September, 2001, doesn't try to save him.
Hanging onto the commander-in-chief's job for 10 years, until he was three years past the obligatory retirement age, did not endear Musharraf to his fellow generals, nor was his perceived subservience to American interests popular among them. When the new commander in chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, said after last month's election that the army would stay out of the political process, he probably meant it.
In that case, Musharraf's problems are probably terminal. In the parliamentary elections of Feb. 18 (postponed for six weeks after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December), the ex-general's tame political party, the PML-Q, won only 15 percent...
Full post @ http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_8578177
No comments:
Post a Comment