Farrukh Khan Pitafi’s Official Website

At a time when the democratic government seemed badly paralyzed and helpless, things have taken a dramatic turn over night. After Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif met yesterday, those who had lost faith in the democratic set up now are clinging to television sets for more information on the chances of Musharraf’s impeachment. Musharraf seems to have abandoned his immediate departure to China.  The presidency and its crony politicos have already started threatening of course through their media moles of the dissolution of assemblies. It remains to be seen whether the presidency will try to act quickly in order to preempt the parliament or not, yet there seems little that the presidency can do.
It is correct that the president was developing a silent chargesheet against the government with the help of the state institutions more recently of the governor State Bank and his foreign peers. Let me remind our readers that partly if not completely responsible for the current financial mayhem is the sitting Governor State Bank. After she rose to power she has tried vainly to be the Alan Greenspan of Pakistan by increasing interest rates in such a naive way that the liquidity has vanished from the market. That has been done despite the fact that the real culprits could not be stopped in exploiting the bourses or making mockery of the price system. The President was currently banking on the sentiment of the men in Khaki who were offended by the move to hand ISI’s charge to Rehman Malik. The government has been proven quick at learning and that disastrous decision has been reversed. If he tries to play with the sentiments of the army any longer the chances are that he will only ensure another martial law in which he would have no voice. If he is expecting miracles from the judiciary let us state it clearly that the judges who took oath under the PCO believe in the ground realities which have already changed considerably. Musharraf is without uniform and everyone knows that the election results gave a clear verdict on him. The foreign masters may want to stick with him but he is no more inevitable for Washington which is soon to face its own presidential election. In my view if he tries to sack the government or dissolve the assemblies the courts will only whitewash his victims and ensure his departure even though I find the PCO judges the least trustworthy. The Army will either have to step in to oversee the sacking of the president and the government or to impose martial law. If fresh elections are held of anyone can win but the pro-Musharraf parties. In case of the martial law things will change beyond calculation. Musharraf then is in a lose lose situation. The sooner he realizes it and chooses to leave with dignity the better it is. And this is not a reasonable time for attempting to sack a government for anyone.

Posted on August 6th, 2008 under General •  Print This Post •  Email This Post • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback