Murder Charge Haunts Musharraf’s Return
By TOM HUSSAIN
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, 26 October 2009 (The National) – [PMLQ-MQM
corrupt traitor] Pervez Musharraf, who in the eight years before 2007
was undisputedly the most powerful man in Pakistan, faces arrest
without the possibility of bail on murder charges if he chooses to
return home after a lengthy lecture tour of Britain and the United
States.
The murder charge, registered on October 8 [2009] on the orders of the
Balochistan High Court, pertains to the 2006 killing, in a military
operation ordered by Musharraf, then the [PMLQ-MQM] president, of
Akbar Shahbaz Khan Bugti, a tribal chief and politician who led an
insurgency in western Balochistan province.
The court order is the latest chapter in the fall from grace of
Musharraf, the former [Pakistan] Army chief who seized power in a
bloodless coup in October 1999, rapidly growing in stature from being
a self-anointed “chief executive” in commando fatigues to an
immaculately groomed global statesman of the post-September 11 era.
The August 2006 killing of Bugti, for 40 years the leading politician
of Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province, sparsely populated but
rich in natural resources, is the earliest in a sequence of acts of
dictatorial governance that have come to haunt Musharraf.
He had greeted news of the killing, while sojourning at a hill resort,
by issuing a late-night public statement of congratulations to the
participating Army units.
An instant wave of public revulsion prompted his publicists to
withdraw the statement the next morning, but the damage it caused to
the public’s perception of Musharraf was irreversible.
For the first time, his [PMLQ-MQM] soft-touch government had owned up
to being the military junta it was, and an unrepentant, ruthless
dictator replaced the dashing figure cut by Musharraf, who had
actually succeeded in overshadowing Pakistan’s exiled popular
politicians, [PPP corrupt traitor] Benazir Bhutto and [PML-N corrupt
traitor Muhammad] Nawaz Sharif.
Indeed, the filing of the murder charges against a former
[unconstitutional, illegal and unlawful] head of state, unprecedented
in Pakistan’s legal history, is a blowback from Musharraf’s next
contentious move – his attempt in March 2007 to force Iftikhar
[Muhammad] Chaudhry, the [Pakistan Supreme Court] Chief Justice, to
resign.
The blocking of that move by a rebellious judiciary sparked the first
popular protests of the Musharraf era, and turned the [corrupt]
private cable news [TV] channels, which owed their existence to a
decision taken in the generous early days of the Musharraf era, into
his fiercest critics.
Stubborn and uncompromising, Musharraf went on to declare a state of
Emergency (which he admitted shortly afterwards was civilian window-
dressing for the imposition of [illegal military] Martial Law) in
November 2007, using it to fire judges, shut down [corrupt] private
news [TV] channels, and promulgate a [fraudulent and unconstitutional]
law – the National Reconciliation Ordinance [NRO] – that granted him
immunity from prosecution for those acts, in return for the withdrawal
of longstanding corruption and criminal cases against many
politicians, notably [PPP corrupt traitor Benazir] Bhutto and her
husband, [PPP corrupt traitor] Asif Ali Zardari, the current [PPP]
president.
Musharraf had evidently thought the [illegal NRO] law – part of a
political transition deal brokered by the United States, Britain and
Saudi Arabia – would enable him to stay on as [PMLQ-MQM] president for
another five-year term, and to use the constitutional powers of the
post to control a fractious Parliament.
However, the assassination of [PPP Chairwoman Benazir] Bhutto in
December 2007 changed the political mood of the country and swept her
Pakistan Peoples Party [PPP] into power in February 2008 [through
unconstitutional, illegal, unlawful, fraudulent and rigged
parliamentary elections].
Under intense political and public pressure, the [Pakistan] Army,
which had months earlier assured Musharraf of its support, deputed
General Nadeem Taj, a relative, to ask him to step down “for the sake
of the reputation of our institution”, leading to his resignation in
August 2008.
Musharraf’s political career has since gone into freefall, with
erstwhile confidants abandoning him in droves.
His legal team, led by [corrupt lawyer] Sharifuddin Pirzada, author of
[many illegal] constitutional amendments enacted by several Pakistani
military juntas, and [corrupt lawyer] Malik Abdul Qayyum, a disgraced
High Court judge who was Musharraf’s attorney-general, have leaked to
the press their refusal to represent Musharraf in the Bugti murder
trial. The team has not in fact represented Musharraf since he
stepped down from power.
Indeed, Musharraf and two of the three politicians [including PML-Q
corrupt traitor Shaukat Aziz] also charged [with murder] have to date
been unable to find a lawyer willing to defend them in the Bugti
death.
Similarly, practically all the politicians persuaded or coerced into
joining the civilian government pieced together by the military’s
Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI] directorate after [unconstitutional,
illegal, unlawful, fraudulent and rigged parliamentary] elections in
2002, which [Benazir] Bhutto and [M. Nawaz] Sharif were barred from
contesting, have in recent months issued public statements saying
there was no room in their respective parties for Musharraf.
One motivation is the fear of being tarred with the Bugti murder
brush. Another is an attempt by Musharraf, even after being forced to
step down, to manipulate those politicians, with the aim of returning
to the political arena, ideally as the head of the Pakistan Muslim
League [PML-Q] faction he created soon after seizing power – a move
that caused the faction to fracture.
Musharraf thus finds himself on the margins of “Af-Pak”, a
geostrategic play he helped create, fighting another futile battle for
survival in the eyes of his former international partners, and
helpless to exorcise the ghosts of his domestic excesses.
