Imran Khan
Pervez Musharraf seems hell-bent on silencing the opposition. Today, Imran Khan is arrested while demonstrating with students in a university. Pervez justifies the crackdown on opposition leaders with the fact that “there is no massing of party interests” despite the existing ban on the planned protest march (from Lahore to the capital Islamabad). He questions the veracity of Bhutto’s claims that there is massive support on the ground for her cause to get the General out of office. Political pundits have cited Bhutto’s short-lived power-sharing deal with Musharraf, as well as recent elections as etiologies of the waning of her influence.
But what he forgets are these:
1. The banning of the protest march prevents a real assessment of Bhutto’s numbers.
2. There does not need to be proof in numbers to gain the right to protest.
3. The arrest of Imran Khan only galvanizes and unites the fractured opposition. It empowers him as a figure, a martyr.
4. Pervez loses international support for his rule. While it may not come from governments themselves, civil society is acting to pressure those governments. Mind you, in real democracies, that’s what’s important.
Can civilians take over from the military? Is it possible to rebel against those who rebelled? against those who hold the knife at your throat? In a country where one man is the government, where this one man fears for the government’s security, the gun he points at his detractors may be already pointed at his head.
The General announces his civilianization by the end of November
Apparently, the General wants to step down as Chief of the Army and assume his presidential office as a civilian… only if the “issue of notification” is resolved. A new caretaker government is on the way, he says. Let’s see where this chess game ends.
humanity at its finest 