However, the country’s election-period caretaker government has refused to back Musharraf’s prosecution saying that it is constitutionally-mandated to “avoid taking any controversial step.” Under Pakistani law, only the duly constituted government can frame treason charges.
Musharraf also faces criminal charges in several other high profile cases. These include his involvement in the December 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister, and the August 2006 military assault that killed, Nawab Akbar Bugti. A former Balochistan governor and tribal leader, Bugti was accused by the government of leading a rebellion against the Pakistani state.
Musharraf returned to Pakistan in March after four-years in self-exile, proclaiming his intention to contest the May 11 National Assembly elections as the leader of the All-Pakistan Muslim League – the party he had founded in 2010. But election authorities and the courts rejected his applications to contest from four constituencies, citing the criminal cases against him. He is currently being held under house arrest at his sprawling farm house outside Islamabad.
Last Friday, the chief prosecutor for Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency, Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali, was ambushed and killed by unidentified gunmen while driving to his Islamabad office. Ali was handling several important cases. These include Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and the LeT’s November 2008 mayhem in Mumbai.
Ali had reportedly requested increased security last month, citing death threats he had received after indicting Musharraf and several other retired generals for aiding and abetting Bhutto’s assassination by failing to provide her with proper security. He reportedly incured the anger of some quarters in the military by initiating Musharraf’s arrest in the Bhutto case.
The campaign for the May 11 National Assembly and provincial elections is taking place under conditions of extreme political crisis and mounting violence.
The Afghan Taliban-aligned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has launched attacks targeting the PPP, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and Awami National Party—the partners in the previous ruling coalition, which expanded Pakistan’s support for the US war in Afghanistan. As a result, these parties have cancelled most rallies and other large election events. In Balochistan, ethno-separatist insurgents have attacked election offices and candidates.
The caretaker government’s refusal to file treason charges against him has some thing to do with its fears of how the military will respond to the prosecution of someone who had headed the armed forces for nine years. Army is the permanent establishment of Pakistan and it wields vast political and economic power and effectively controls the country’s foreign and national security policies.
The military, from all reports, tried to dissuade Musharraf from returning home, for they well recognized that he is a spent force; he also stands discredited for suppressing basic democratic rights, for presiding over pro-market policies that had led to increased economic insecurity and poverty, and for his role in facilitating the war on Afghanistan and U.S.-drone strikes in Pakistan, and for ordering brutal military campaigns against Balochi nationalists and Taliban-aligned groups in the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.
However, the military top brass cannot be indifferent to Musharraf’s fate, without risking its own prestige and power. Most of the top brass—including General Kayani, the army chief, and at least nine corps commanders—were promoted to leadership positions by Musharraf. And during the eight years he served as Pakistan’s “chief executive” and president, the military greatly extended its economic power.
Pakistan’s political parties have all expressed their support for Musharraf’s prosecution, which they well recognize enjoys overwhelming popular support.
The PPP and Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) welcomed Musharraf’s 1999 coup. In 2007, Benazir Bhutto and her PPP helped Musharraf stage his phony “re-election” as President under a Bush administration brokered-deal. The deal subsequently unravelled, because Musharraf and the clique around him balked at parting with any real power, but it called for Bhutto to serve as the General’s Prime Minister with the aim of shoring up his regime and expanding Pakistan’s support for the Afghan war
Nawaz Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), has never forgiven Musharraf for ousting him from power in 1999. But he himself was a protégé of Pakistan’s previous military strongman and the architect of its “Islamization” policy, General Zia ul-Huq.
As for Supreme Court Justice Muhammad Iftikhar Chaudry, while he had a falling out with Musharraf in 2007—that is in the eighth year of his regime—he had earlier joined with the other top justices in giving a constitutional fig-leaf to Musharraf’s coup. And he was elevated to his post as head of the Supreme Court by none other than the general himself.
Officially the military has said nothing about Musharraf’s arrest. But speaking at a ceremony to mark Pakistan’s military “martyrs” on April 30, Kayani declared: “If we succeed in rising above all ethnic, linguistic and sectarian biases to vote solely on the basis of … merit and competence, there would be no reason to fear dictatorships.” The military has routinely invoked the incompetence and corruption of civilian governments to justify its seizure of power.
On May 2, Lahore daily, The Nation, cited reliable sources to report that a five-member US Congressional delegation led by Senator Joe Donnelly and the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Richard Olsonto, had held a secret meeting with Musharraf at his “sub-jail” residence. According to the report Musharraf wanted a “graceful exit” from Pakistan. The delegation is said to have later met with government leaders and General Kiyani.
The US embassy has denied any meeting with Musharraf occurred but the newspaper stood by its report.
—By Vilani Peiris
