Author: DR FAROOQ HASSAN

The general is plainly wrong when he maintains consistently that there is democracy in Pakistan! In his conception of democracy there is the consolidation of offices of the army chief and the presidency. Even more bizarre is the realisation that in any living democratic country these two offices are really powerless to determine the outcome of any contentious matter involving political issues. These are after all politically non-significant jobs; one is a ceremonial post the other one being one involves merely professionalism. Yet in Pakistan these positions have acquired a significance which is impossible to deny.

General Musharraf has fundamentally become quite transparent. He is further fooling nobody when he says that every thing is done according to the constitution. His conception of a constitution is the document through which his rule became personalised. Through his self-serving and self-crafted ‘legal instruments’ he stayed on as the head of the country’s armed forces for nearly a decade as well as a head of state since the day he engineered a coup on October 12, 1999. No wonder his immensely talkative once Information Minister and now in-charge of running the nation’s railways said on November 01 that the constitution is like a nose of wax that should be moulded as one pleases.

Now we are told that he would leave the army position ‘if’ he is ‘elected’ as president; factually this would be for the third time whereas the constitution under Article 44 (2) provides that none can keep this office for more than twice! Most astonishingly he is insisting that he took such decisions in national interests.

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