Pakistan Dawn November 10, 2007
The view from the palace
By Irfan Husain
IMAGINE, if only for a moment, that you are the master of all you survey. President and chief of the army, you are surrounded by yes-men who praise you to the skies morning, noon and night. Powerful leaders from around the world court you. You live in a huge palace, with pomp and protocol at every step.
And when your enemies try and kill you, Providence intervenes to save you each time. Due to a distant event, your country's coffers are full, and experts give you the credit for this windfall. Small wonder, then, that you come to think of yourself as indispensable, and deep inside, you convince yourself that God is on your side.
So when a mere judge refuses to obey you, you can be excused for wanting to put him in his place. And when this attempt triggers a movement led by lawyers, you can be forgiven for trying to crush it.
Obviously, these are jealous, petty people trying to derail the progress the country has made under you.But humiliatingly, you are forced to accept the return of this judge to the bench, and now he and some of his colleagues are threatening to dethrone you. What can you do to halt this subversive move?
Clearly, you cannot abdicate and hand power to inept, corrupt politicians. The country needs you to continue in office. In both offices, in fact. How dare people ask you to give up the command of the army?
The answer is to throw out the judges questioning your right to rule; lock up lawyers who demand your ouster; beat up political activists; and shut down TV channels that have the nerve to encourage citizens to oppose you. And if the international community disapproves, too bad: after all, you are doing all this in the national interest.
I hope you enjoyed this little daydream, but welcome back to reality. I evoked Musharraf's mindset to give you an idea where he's coming from, and what motivates him. Judging from the history of dictatorships around the world and over the centuries, tyrants convince themselves that without them, their respective countries would go to the dogs.
Thus, they owe it to their people to hang on in power. This delusion justifies every excess, every illegal act.
The truth, of course, is that this struggle for self-perpetuation is aimed at keeping the perks and power of office. Once out of uniform, you are just another retired general, and these are a dime a dozen in Pakistan. Having wielded absolute power for eight years, living a life of obscurity and irrelevance is a frightening prospect.
When bureaucrats on the verge of retirement do their best to get an extension, you can see why Musharraf is so desperate to hang on.
One sign of his desperation is the fact that he is even willing to forego the goodwill of the West, something he had cultivated so eagerly since 9/11. But this limelight had dimmed ever since his ham-handed action to rid himself of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry earlier this year. Even before that event, there was muttering in Washington that he wasn't doing enough against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
And although his emergency proclamation (read 'declaration of martial law') stated at the outset that one reason was to enable the government to act more firmly against terrorism, nobody has been fooled. All the might of the state over the last week has been directed against unarmed, moderate and secular elements of civil society.
In the event, crushing dissent has not been as easy as Musharraf had supposed. Large numbers of ordinary people have been appalled and infuriated by the wave of repression he has unleashed, and are protesting in whatever manner they can. While the West has not yet announced any sanctions, the longer Musharraf continues on his chosen path, the more he risks becoming an international pariah.
And while the government focuses on its political opponents, the situation in Swat is deteriorating fast. Maulana Fazlullah and his army of local and foreign militants have already captured half the valley without meeting any opposition from the state. So clearly, the present emergency rule is not directed against him and his ilk.
Musharraf has announced that elections will now be held 'by mid-February'. But even if they are held in the next few months, how can anybody trust this lot to make even a pretence of a free and fair election? After all their lies and broken promises, it would take a very naive person to believe this government again.
And if and when the emergency is lifted, how can we get back to normal unless the chief justice of the Supreme Court and all the other judges who have been arbitrarily removed are restored to their respective benches? If this does not happen, agitation will continue in one form or another. And of course, Musharraf cannot survive if he does restore them.
Thus, he has painted himself into a corner. The only way out for him is to quit both offices. Had he done so a few months ago, he could have left the scene as a statesman, with respect and dignity intact.
Now, if he leaves, he will have been driven out. However, as we saw in our little daydream, he is not about to leave voluntarily. The country is in for a rocky few months as the government is caught in a squeeze between extremists and the secular opposition.
Musharraf has made a meaningful dialogue with political parties virtually impossible. Benazir Bhutto is unlikely to lend him her support without losing all credibility. And she is far too canny a politician to pull him out of the hole he has dug for himself. Looked at from any angle, Musharraf has created a lose-lose situation for himself.
To end, I can do no better than to quote Voltaire on tyranny:
"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannise them will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious or otherwise, to put shackles on sleeping men."
-- My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty. - Jorge Louis Borges