After the Emergency

Asif

One is just waiting to see how Musharraf will cope with the situation after the emergency is reversed, the curb on media channels lifted and the fundamental rights of citizens restored. The media will come back stronger and all that happened during the black-out phase will be exposed and shown for weeks and months to come. The civil society will be even more mobilised than it was before the emergency. Wide spread condemnations will continue by all and sundry. Will the final conclusion to all this mayhem for Musharraf be – game over, you win?, certainly not. Does he expect the people of Pakistan to just say ‘yes sir’ and accept him in a civilian role after demoralising and bulldozing the once revered institutions such as the army, more recently the courts and not to mention the parliament and senate which just abided by whatever policies were chalked out by his cheer leader, Shaukat Aziz?

After Musharraf assumes a civilian role he will certainly have lost his power base – the army, the winds will not always be in one direction then, and his influence will dwindle. Unless the next Government bails him out by continuing to walk in his shoes (read America’s DMS), there’s no way out for him. Even if the next Government does go bonkers and keeps the ball rolling in the same direction as it has been for the last 6 or so months, that will surely result in their political death. No matter which party comes into power, whether through rigged elections or otherwise, the repercussion of doing so will be grave.

The beginning of the end has started for Musharraf and if he has the most miniscule bit of self respect left in him, he won’t have the audacity to even accept the slightest roles of public service in the future setup. The nation is fed up of him and his stooges. The very corrupt stooges that he brought to power through blackmail will be the first ones making him the scapegoat. There will be no one to scratch the back of Musharraf after the emergency rule, the sooner he realizes this, the better.

While Musharraf keeps the entire nation in the dark, he opts to give a minute by minute update to his mentors in Washington. Is this his version of ‘Pakistan First’? We get to know what his next step will be (or what blunder follows) from the State Department rather than our own ministries and media. His three prong strategy that he flashes to the western world so cohesively has so many countless other prongs protruding from the sides. Where Alberto Gonzales had to resign as attorney journal of the U.S for making the judiciary too politicized, in stark contrast, in our country judges were removed for being too independent. It’s high time we stop being dictated by neo-cons whose values remain intact in their own homeland but export the deformed and compromised form of their values to other countries. People in power are threatened to be aligned towards goals of the western world or face a reduction in aid. The day our leaders took money in exchange for our independence, the day we sold out on true democracy and prosperity. Had we not taken the money the first time around, we would’ve been much more independent and democratic by now. We are far better off without it, the money that is sent is only used by people in power to flash the economic prosperity card and clamp down on any rational movements, and nothing goes into real sustainable development.

Of late, people are getting wiser and more involved in the politics played by the ruling elite. The order of the day would be to end this emergency rule, have free and fair elections, and the current rulers have a somewhat respectful exit from the scene. If however, the power seats are clutched even harder, there will be an irreparable damage to not only the country as a whole but the army will feel the brunt of the entire nation by looking down upon them for years to come.

There’s a fast way of killing a nation and there’s a slow way. The day the NRO was signed, a piece of us died. The day the constitution was held in abeyance and the PCO promulgated, another piece of us died. The day the police beat and thrashed the intelligentsia of our nation, another piece died – and so the slow death continues.