Elections In Pakistan: Why Arresting Pervez Musharraf Is A Mistake

How does removing a candidate from the election fray promote democracy?

Pakistan Electoral Alliances | Comic Wisdom – by Zahoor on December 3rd, 2012 – The Express Tribune

udicial vengeance is dish that is best served cold. It should never be served hot and steaming.

One Big Mistake

Pakistan‘s judiciary has made this, one fundamental mistake. Especially at a time, when restraint was needed. Remember, Pakistan is living up to the fact that for the first time an elected government has completed a full-term.

All the confusion in Pakistan is best captured by a confusing and ill-thought post in the WSJ.com. By my favorite journalist – Sadanand Dhume.

I especially favor him, because no other journalist of any globally or nationally relevant publication writes from a position of such ignorance and lack of understanding.

For one Dhume has not learnt that …

Well Begun Is Half Done

The post starts off with a contradiction.

How does removing a candidate from the election fray promote democracy?

The lesson from Indian democracy is that any one can stand for election. Dacoits, transgenders, actors, filmstars, mobsters – the full range of social strata.

Unlike most of the world’s democracies, especially in the West, that have just 2 parties.

It is only in India that the 2 main parties tend towards towards an arithmetic mean of 40%-60% of the parliamentary seats. The rest are controlled by various regional and fringe parties. Left, Right, Ruralist (Bharatiya Kisan Union), Urbanist (Shiv Sena)

This trend has become even more accentuated in the last 30 years. Remember that after 1980, no party has won an electoral majority on merit. Rajiv Gandhi’s 1984 electoral victory was clearly a sympathy vote.

This promotes a vibrant clash in ideologies, programs, values, actions. The resultant clamor leaves India’s English speaking urban chatteratti very dis-satisfied. Not to forget foreign observers.

India’s English speaking urban chatteratti would like to replicate 2-party system like the West.

Dhume asserts

Pervez Musharraf’s recent legal setbacks are Pakistan’s gain. Since Saturday, the country’s former military leader has found himself confined by police to a bedroom in his farmhouse on the outskirts of Islamabad. (via Sadanand Dhume: At Home With Pervez Musharraf – WSJ.com.).

What is it that Parvez Musharraf is accused of?

Like how George Bush subverted the SCOTUS which stopped the recount of votes that would have declared Al Gore as the President – and not GWB, Jr. Every Pakistani politicians (and in all other parts of the world) have at some or the other subverted the judiciary.

Appointing pliable judges; cooperative judges who were elevated; ideological conformity, would all count as subversion. Has any politician in any country of the world not done this?

Going by this standard, no politician would be qualify to fight an election.

A smug Dhume continues

He faces charges ranging from complicity in the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007 to wrongful dismissal of judges in the waning days of his unpopular rule, which stretched from 1999 to 2008. (via Sadanand Dhume: At Home With Pervez Musharraf – WSJ.com.)

Being practical, since Musharraf was not going to win the election anyway, why not arrest him and throw the rule book at him? A sarcastic Dhume intones

Meanwhile, his quixotic hope of once again leading Pakistan was dashed after courts rejected his attempt to run for parliament. Pundits don’t expect Mr. Musharraf’s political party to claim a single seat in elections scheduled for May 11. (via Sadanand Dhume: At Home With Pervez Musharraf – WSJ.com.)

Have You Thunk Of This?

Is it a crime, for any hack with any US publication to dream of winning the Pulitzer? How is it a crime for Musharraf to dream of winning the election?

Misplaced or otherwise?

Dhume has ‘thunk’ about this. And he determines that

A two-week house arrest is far from the welcome Mr. Musharraf expected on his return to Pakistan last month after more than four years of self-exile. In a stream of tweets and Facebook posts, the former commando had painted a picture of a grateful nation waiting to sweep him back to power with a popular mandate. (via Sadanand Dhume: At Home With Pervez Musharraf – WSJ.com.)

The only delusions that exceed Musharraf’s are those of Western media outlets, who have written anything on Pakistan. All those well-trained, untrained, first-rate, third-grade journalists who have come, few have made sense of Pakistan.

Musharraf is not alone. Dhume repeats.

In addition to serving as a case study in political delusion. (via Sadanand Dhume: At Home With Pervez Musharraf – WSJ.com.)

More than Islam, the problem with elections in the Islamic world is the US of A.

Countless cases of US agencies, NGOs, diplomats have indicted, identified responsible for subverting election processes. Starting with the murder of Mossadegh in Iran to the latest cases where US NGO bureaucrats were arrested in Egypt.

A memory-challenged Dhume pronounces

Should next month’s polls go off as planned, Pakistan will join Turkey, Bangladesh and Indonesia as countries that have defied those who doubt Islam’s compatibility with democracy. (via Sadanand Dhume: At Home With Pervez Musharraf – WSJ.com.)

Does the US select mentally retarded people as generals, bureaucrats or Presidents. After 50 years of propping military dictators in Pakistan, Dhume thinks it is a lesson that US polity is yet to learn?

For the U.S., the general’s arrest should underscore a central lesson of the Musharraf era, that backing military leadership in Islamabad never pays off. (via Sadanand Dhume: At Home With Pervez Musharraf – WSJ.com.)

After stopping Musharaff from electioneering, after fixing the ballot by engineering cases, the Pakistani establishment gets support from Dhume.

Only when Pakistan’s politicians grow confident that they won’t be jailed, exiled or executed for crossing the military will they be able to decisively reorient their country. (via Sadanand Dhume: At Home With Pervez Musharraf – WSJ.com.)

Musharraf is an ex-general – and now a civilian politician. He deserves the same freedom that other politicians have, to contest elections.

House arrest for a once grandstanding general is one large step in this direction. (via Sadanand Dhume: At Home With Pervez Musharraf – WSJ.com.)

And in case, he wins the election, vox-populi, vox dei.(Voice of people is voice of Gods). In case, he loses the election, proceed with the prosecution of the case.

Judiciary Finding Its Feet

Judicial vengeance against Musharraf must wait. Just when Pakistan seemed to making this election work, they have gone ahead and shot themselves in their foot.

Pakistan’s judiciary and establishment must honor the promise of freedom that they gave Musharraf.

Any democracy that does not allow full freedom to contestants, is no democracy.

What is to stop other officials and rivals, tomorrow, from engineering cases against important (or otherwise) candidates.

Dhume seems to be clueless on how democracies are sustained. Instead of teaching, he should sit at the feet of some Indian Election Commission official.

And learn.

Related Articles

• Humiliation of Pervez Musharraf deepens as he is arrested and taken to court (independent.co.uk)
• Pakistani police defuse bomb near Pervez Musharraf house (guardian.co.uk)
• Musharraf does not trust bench hearing treason case: counsel (dawn.com)
• Musharraf’s arrest can jeopardize May elections, analysts fear (nation.com.pk)
• Pakistan’s Musharraf Appears Before Anti-Terrorism Court (voanews.com)
• Musharraf to appeal against arrest order (nation.com.pk)
• Former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf arrested (ndtv.com)

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