Are Musharraf’S Days Now Numbered?

The huge losses his party suffered in Pakistan’s parliamentary elections may soon push this tyrant out of office. Are Musharraf’s Days Now Numbered?By Cliff Montgomery – Feb. 20th, 2008Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has spent a career as a soldier, and has enjoyed being the political tyrant of his country for almost 10 years. But a shattering parliamentary loss in recent elections may soon push him out of office.The electoral rout has further lessened this Bush-supported leader’s political appeal, and several experts believe the tyrant’s days in power may be numbered.Musharraf already has surrendered his control of the army; he apparently is despised by a majority of his countrymen; and he has proven to be an ineffectual–or uncaring–ally to the West in its battle against Islamic extremism, or Islamism.”I don’t see him surviving. It is just a question of time,” Pakistani newspaper and television commentator Shafqat Mahmood told The Associated Press (AP) on Tuesday.Monday’s elections were an embarrassment for Musharraf’s party, which mustered only 15 percent of voters to its side. This humiliation revealed the lack of confidence Pakistan’s 160 million people now have in their president.To be fair, Musharraf is in a nearly impossible position.When he does crack down on Islamists (many of whom are al-Qaeda members–Osama bin Laden and other top commanders are almost surely moving around the porous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan), Pakistan’s powerful Islamist factions accuse him of being a puppet of the West. When Musharraf eases his hunt for militants, the West accuses him of being soft on terrorism.And when his tyrannical tendencies have gotten the better of him–perhaps as much out of frustration as from an unnatural desire to dominate others–he has lost what little prestige he still had in Pakistan and in the rest of the world.Add high food prices and a simple weariness of protracted military rule to the mix, and you get the kind of electoral whipping this president has just received from his own people.The winners in Monday’s vote were the parties of former Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in late December.The popular parties almost won the needed two-thirds majority to impeach President Musharraf. Bhutto’s party won 33.6 percent of seats in the National Assembly and Sharif’s party won an impressive 25.9 percent of seats, according to official returns which were nearly complete late Tuesday.”The fact that parties opposed to Musharraf won the election was a clear denunciation of his actions and politics,” Mahmood told AP.Such top presidential aides as the ruling party chairman, the foreign minister and a former leading government spokesman failed in their drive to win a parliamentary seat.After Monday’s win, Sharif repeated his call for the president to resign–a reminder of Musharraf’s boast in 2007 that he would step down if it became clear he no longer had the people’s support.”He has closed his eyes. He has said before that he would go when the people want him to do so and now the people have given their verdict,” Sharif said to reporters in Lahore, Pakistan.Part of this public outrage stems from Musharraf’s alliance with the West in its fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It’s an alliance few Pakistanis now believe to be in their interest.Yet Pakistanis also are angry about their military’s grip on political power through most of the last decade–a dominance which began when then-General Musharraf ousted Sharif in a 1999 bloodless coup.And they still are enraged over Musharraf’s declared “state of emergency” in November–a tyrannous move solely intended to keep Pakistan’s Supreme Court from declaring illegal his presidential re-election through the previous parliament (In parliamentary governments, the incoming parliament is to elect the president).”Instead of being the unifying figure he is pretending to be, Musharraf has led Pakistan into a dark alley,” Lahore University of Management Sciences political science professor Rasul Baksh Rais told AP.”The only way he can survive now is through manipulation–and the more he does that, the more public sentiment will go against him,” Rais added.Like what you’re reading so far? Then why not order a full year (52 issues) of thee-newsletter for only $15? A major article covering an story not being told in the Corporate Press will be delivered to your email every Monday morning for a full year, for less than 30 cents an issue. Order Now!