EUROPEUS

Every time I’m thinking or reading about Pakistan and General Musharraf I cannot avoid asking the same questions… and there are more questions coming. For example, how can you expect democracy from somebody who confuted the very foundations of democracy, and finally how can you call somebody an ally in a war to bring peace and democracy who survives through terror and violence? Most of all, how can expect this person to help you return the country to a democratic ethic when that person lacks any kind of ethic and respect to any kind of institution, especially the highest of all in a democracy, the institution of freedom, of choice, of respect to others?

As amazing as it may sound, that’s today’s reality in Pakistan and the joke the last days is that Musharraf declared that if he will be re-elected he’s going to resign from his army chief post! This sounds like a cunning twist from a naive dictator. So he’s going to give up his uniform and he will be George W. Bush style the chief in command. He will wear cowboy hats and from his farm he will manipulate the country through his only real supporters, the army.

Oddly George W. Bush and the American administration consider this horror an ally in the war against terror and a guarantee for democracy in south east Asia, yet oddly the only one who actually dared to ignore the dictator and prove that you can beat a monster with democratic methods has been a conservative politician, who, in theory and ideologically, is much closer to Musharraf than anybody else.

The former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif tried unsuccessfully to return to Islamabad to challenge Musharraf’s power but he had to return to Saudi Arabia. His lawyers are going to challenge the dictator in the country’s Supreme Court declaring his actions, his coup and him illegal worthy of serious punishment. Of course, Mr. Sharif is not so naïve; he’s using the latest disagreement between the dictator and the Supreme Court because even a dictator like him has to show some respect to some institutions. Another former Pakistani prime minister trying to negotiate with the dictator unsuccessfully even though her ruling was full of scandals and corruption, actually it was in her period when Musharraf’s star raised.

During and after Saddam’s regime there were many questions concerning the Americans’ methods since they were behind the creation of the monster. The Americans were the ones who put him in power because at that certain moment it worked well for the American plans concerning the Middle East, especially with the Iranian problem raising fast. So they created a monster in an already problematic area and obviously they didn’t learn the lesson.

They created and promoted another monster, and on top of that in a country that has weapons of mass destruction. The situation between India and Pakistan has long been dangerous, often scary, and the threat of nuclear weapons is very clear and visual in this part of the world. Therefore, to have as a leader in one of the two countries an unstable person like Musharraf is, at the very least, dangerous. The man has proved already that he is untrustworthy and he has proved already that his access to endless power is not even worth the lives of his compatriots.

 

Thanos Kalamidas is cofounder of Ovi Magazine

With Ovi Magazine 15:23 Publié dans