Ah so!

Ah so!

By Kamran Shafi

THE General to the BBC just before that great friend of Latin American dictators, John Negroponte, came a-calling: “Before March I was very good. Suddenly did I go mad after March or suddenly my personality changed, am I a Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde or what is it? Am I such a person? Please go into the details, the causes. What am I doing? Have I done anything unconstitutional, illegal? Yes, I did it on 3rd November. Did I do it before? Not once.”

And: “They (our nuclear assets or bums in the vernacular!) cannot fall into the wrong hands if we manage ourselves politically. The military is there – as long as the military is there, nothing happens to the strategic assets, we are in charge and nobody does anything to them.”

Three things here. One, he did not do anything ‘unconstitutional illegal’ (hello, what’s this?) before 3rd November when he imposed emergency on the country, suspending whatever human rights we had? Er, the actions of Oct 12, 1999 when an elected, constitutional government was kicked out were not ‘unconstitutional illegal’?

Two, ‘suddenly’ he did not go mad; nor did his personality change; and neither is he Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. (Lord, how many nights did I lie awake, shivering in fear after seeing the film in, if memory serves, Delhi in 1955). And three, he is not clinging to power come hell or high water just because he wants to cling to power; he is only clinging to power to ensure that our bums do not fall into extremist hands. Ah so! And here we were thinking all he really wanted were the pelf and privileges that come from his position of pre-eminence that he and his toadies are so used to by now. Silly us! Traitors the lot of us, actually, to impute motives to him.

Be which as it may, let us get down to serious matters and first ask what in the world he means when he says our bums are safe “as long as we are in charge”? Who is “we”? Why is he making himself synonymous with the army when he has announced repeatedly that he would retire from his army post just as soon as the ‘revamped’ Supreme Court validates his so-called ‘election’ to the presidency? Is he suggesting that he will stay on as COAS till Kingdom Come? Or that the army will continue to call the shots?

Might one also ask what will happen to the military (read army) in the unlikely event that a fair election is held in the country and a properly constituted government takes over? Will the army (which today guards our bums) disappear into thin air, leaving them unprotected to be grabbed by all comers, specially (shiver, shiver) Al Qaeda?

The Commando will do what he will to cling to power, and no one has any control over that, probably not even he himself. The question to ask once again is what Ms Bhutto will do. While her answer to the same question last week was to say to Musharraf that he was no longer acceptable to her as President, in or out of uniform, Negroponte’s telephone call to her (he did not deign to see her) seems to have done the trick. What did he say to her? You are with us or you are against us?

I seem to have lost one hundred rupees, the maximum that I bet, to my old friend Zahid Zaman who said she would relent vis-à-vis Musharraf. He was right; I, who pretend to know her these twenty years, was dead wrong.

But leave alone that the ‘elections’ will be held under virtual martial law, what will she achieve by going into them after all that The Commando has said: variously that the House of Zahoor-led PML will win; the next prime minister will be from the Kings Party; and that Benazir is only the ‘Darling of the West’ but doesn’t really have any popular following?

It is very bad news indeed that the leader of what was Pakistan’s only anti-establishment party has acquiesced to the demands of the US administration that she not upset their tight buddy’s apple cart. An apple cart, I might add, with two wheels missing and the third in utter disrepair.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

As said earlier in these very columns, there seems to be only one way for all democrats who believe in the rule of law and constitution. To demand that emergency (read martial law) be lifted immediately; the Honourable Supreme and High Courts return to status quo ante Nov 3; truly neutral caretaker governments and an election commission approved by all the stakeholders be installed; and every political party and its leaders including Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif be allowed to take part in the elections.

There is strength in unity, every politician must understand. Otherwise, the Establishment will pick them off one by one. When it comes to ‘Aksariat’ we haven’t seen anything yet.

Afterthought: At a recent demo against muzzling the TV channels I carried placards saying ‘Yankee go Home’ and ‘Negroponte Out!’ I, of all people!! For the Americans must be told that they are increasingly being looked upon as those described in The Ugly American, the great late-50’s book by Lederer and Burdick: arrogant, rude, and downright stupid.

Some years ago I asked then Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain (in print) to make this classic compulsory reading for her staff. Looking at the bigger mess we are in I don’t think she listened to me but before it gets any messier may I suggest to the present Her Excellency to please do so?

Bushism of the Week: “In other words, he was given an option: Are you with us or are you not with us? And he made a clear decision to be with us, and he has acted on that advice.” — On President Pervez Musharraf, Crawford, Texas, Nov 10, 2007. (Reader, please note the date).

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk