What was even more striking was the fact that while President Zardari was making all out efforts to sweet-talk the Friends of Democratic Pakistan Club to eke out a few billions to help Pakistan’s tottering economy, though without much success, the former Pakistani president was drawing full houses at his lectures and sharing US media limelight to the hilt.
At home, Nawaz Sharif and company are quite busy in finding ways to put Pervez Musharraf in the dock for imposing a state of emergency in the country. It is quite strange though that the former Prime Minister has showed no inclination to press charges against Musharraf for the Oct 12, 1999 coup that dislodged his democratically-elected government and resulted in his spending quite a few years in the political wilderness.
Pervez Musharraf does not appear to be perturbed by the machinations of his former boss. And now that he spends a lot more time on the golf course, he has greater opportunity to ponder over the days when he ruled the roost in Pakistan. What he probably rues the most is the fast turn of events starting from that eventful day in March 2007 when the chief justice of Pakistan came calling and soon after all hell broke loose. It had soon become quite apparent to him that asking the sitting chief justice to resign on the basis of a list of charges that the government had brought up was an ill-advised move. It triggered a domino effect and eventually resulted in Musharraf’s resignation in August 2008 – something he wouldn’t have imagined a year back.
It certainly goes to the credit of Pervez Musharraf that ever since the day he quit power, he has not behaved like other retired officers who simply disappear from the scene and you only see them when they resurface to wash dirty linen in TV talk shows. Mr. Zardari and his friends may take credit for the fact that the former president is playing more golf than before. However, beyond the greens, the general is also making his presence felt on the international scene by making a positive case for Pakistan and convincing his audiences that his country has an important role to play in the global scenario and that the Pakistani people, if provided honest and sincere leadership, have the resilience to go very far.
Wherever the former President goes - India, China, Europe, America - he impresses his audiences. In his recent “The World as I See it” address in the Trinity University Distinguished Lecture Series, he called for the world to understand the major problems it faces and to address them both globally and domestically.
“We have to show a collective will to address these problems,” he said. Musharraf listed various political disputes, extremism and terrorism and economic inequalities plaguing developing nations as some of the major problems that must be confronted.
He pointed to the Palestinian dispute as a political struggle that has destabilized not only the Middle East but the entire Muslim world. He also brought up other recent conflicts, including the wars in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya.
“This all is happening in the Muslim world. Muslims happen to be at the receiving end in all of them. And therefore, this is the root cause of terrorism and extremism within the Muslim world,” he said.
Musharraf also highlighted the economic divide between developed countries and third world nations. Many underdeveloped areas suffer from abject poverty and illiteracy, he said and warned that if the economic inequities were not addressed, “the islands of prosperity will be drowned in the oceans of poverty.”
The question to ask is that the way Pervez Musharraf is conducting himself on the international scene and the importance that he is getting, is he still relevant to Pakistan? Does he have a future role to play in the country?
It is strongly argued that since Pervez Musharraf ruled Pakistan with military muscle, his eight year stint did not allow real democracy to flourish. However, South Asian policy expert Anatol Lieven has a different view. He says that all civilian governments have been guilty of corruption, election rigging and the imprisonment or murder of political opponents, in some cases to a worse degree than the military administrations that followed.
He explains that the pool from which leaders have come post-Musharraf, has offered little hope for anything different. In his view, alternative options were extensions of this very leadership. They offered dynastic governance (Benazir Bhutto as daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto) or perpetual subversion of democracy through maintaining a feudal system (Asif Zardari). In his view, the feudal system wherein masses of uneducated Pakistanis are bound to a servile existence is what causes this kind of aristocracy to reign. This rampant subversion of Pakistani citizenry is a far cry from democracy.
When Pervez Musharraf was in power, one single important step that he took to empower the people was his liberalizing of the media. As is now clearly evident, this brought a sea change for the common Pakistani because it gave him access to news and views independent of state censorship and interest. In sharp contrast, Nawaz Sharif’s media policy was based on rigid censorship of television and print media.
In the view of those who have been closely watching the ups and downs of the Pakistani people’s 62-year old struggle to achieve real democracy, media privatization is Musharraf’s crowning achievement and its effects will have lasting impact on ultimately allowing a viable democracy to take shape in Pakistan by way of a meaningful dissemination of independent and increasingly globalized information.
The Musharraf government also succeeded in putting the national economy on rails and averaging a 7% annual growth rate over a five year period. In contrast what the decade of the 1990s (also remembered as the ‘lost decade’) managed was just 3% average growth. These were the days of civilian democratic rule with both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif alternately playing their innings.
Some independent experts are of the opinion that economic growth actually did have a “trickle down” effect in Pakistan in Musharraf’s days as a better standard of living was witnessed through increased consumption and access to consumer products and services at all levels.
A frequent foreign visitor to the country observed, “For the first time in Karachi, I saw hired help, including chauffeurs, who are part of the working class, carrying cell phones and purchasing American DVDs.”
It was in this period that women were allowed to come to the fore and given opportunities to play a role in the country’s affairs. They had a much greater representation in the senate, the national and provincial assemblies and local government and were increasingly seen occupying key positions in the financial and business sectors.
One heard Javed Jabbar once describing Pervez Musharraf as a ‘very collegial’ person. His army colleagues also say that even in key command positions, Musharraf never took important decisions alone and always consulted his other officers.
It is quite disturbing then that when the issue of the judicial reference against Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry came up, he did not sit with his close advisors to give more thought to the measures that were being proposed against the chief justice by certain quarters in the government. Why was he in a hurry to take action against the chief justice and later against other members of the judiciary? And, above all, why did he acquiesce to signing the NRO, thus setting in motion a chain of events that has opened the doors to the present dark era of misgovernance and pitted the people and the country into a battle for their very survival?
The Pakistani people have discovered to their utter dismay that military man Musharraf may not be perfect, but democratically elected leaders can well be worse.
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