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General relief in Pak as Mush
says Khuda Hafiz
WSN Bureau
 ISLAMABAD/NEW
DELHI:
“Gaddi Chadd, Baith Ke Ro, General Vardi Lah Ke Dhoh”. Roughly
translated, it means “Exit now and do some crying, go home and wash
your uniform” but frankly, no translation can bring out the
evocative feeling with which thousands of Pakistanis were
celebrating the departure from the scene of Pervez Musharraf who had
clearly overstayed his welcome.
“Of course, the
Constitution has given me other ways also, other powers also,”
Musharraf said in his live telecast swansong, for a moment sending
shivers down the spine of anyone who can spell Democracy. But in the
end, he bid Khuda Hafiz. With hindsight, it almost seemed
inevitable.
As for the
Sikhs, the Punjab to Punjab bonhomie discourse did go ahead under
Musharraf's regime and the idea of opening the trade route between
Attari and Wagah fructified. Jathas of Sikhs regularly went to
Pakistan.
The CMs of two Punjabs exchanged visits. Release of prisoners
happened regularly and many steps were taken in the right direction.
One only hopes
the new dispensation in
Pakistan
continues to engage with Punjabis and Sikhs with an equally positive
mindset.
Some recall will
be very appropriate. The message to Field Marshal (self-appointed)
Ayub Khan in March 1969 that his time was up was conveyed by the
then judge advocate-general of the army. Before going in to see the
embattled field marshal, the judge advocate-general called for a
double whiskey (Black Dog, as we are told). This was most unusual.
Visitors to the president, if they felt like quenching their thirst,
asked for a whiskey – large or small – on their way out, not on
their way in. What is more, the judge advocate-general called for a
second whiskey and only after thus working up some Dutch courage for
himself did he walk in to the president and deliver his ominous
message.
Musharraf by now
was hardly left with that charisma. Lawyers in
Pakistan
had ensured that the idea of invincibility was reduced to a joke.
Still, the General without the uniform left with some, even if
threadbare, dignity. It could have been messier. The impeachment
move seemed serious, and Uncle Sam had seen the back of Mush.
Pervez
Musharraf’s reign started with high drama in the skies and ended
with a very reluctant, dragging drop scene under the media’s glare.
He banished Sharif, held elections, presided over a political
circus, saw the return of Sharif, the assassination of Bhutto but
finally failed to read the writing on the wall until pushed by the
Zardari-Sharif plan to drag him through the Parliament.
He was the least
camera-shy of leaders, and predictable only in his
unpredictability.
The long list of
achievements he enumerated as his last hurrah, not exactly in order
of importance, sounded like it was a shower of all that was good and
prosperous that came and went. The Khuda Hafiz he bade betrayed the
adieu of a defeated man. It’s a shame that despite his achievements
as a once popular leader and the face the world had come to know
Pakistan
by he should have been his own undoing. The man was never the evil
he had come to be portrayed as by his opponents, especially in his
last year in office.
Mr Musharraf’s
unraveling lay in his own actions which did not always match the
words he pledged. A fair accountability regime that he promised in
1999 was never put in place. The transition to democracy overseen by
him was a manipulated affair. The promising devolution plan was made
unworkable by subjecting it to the cronies he installed in the
provincial administrations. While the ‘enlightened moderation’
policy saw some of the laws repugnant to women being amended to the
latter’s benefit, it was also blemished by the scandalous handling
of rape cases by the president himself.
20 August, 2008
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