Pakistan: Has the Unravelling Begun?

Had Pakistan had a democratically elected government in power today, most people would have felt that given recent events, the government was on its way out. They would have started making predictions about the imminent collapse of the government and the rumour mills would have begun the work which has taken up most of their time over the last 15 years. Over the last couple of weeks, ironically immediately after the laudatory and sycophantic decision of the Supreme Court of Pakistan justifying and endorsing Musharraf’s unconstitutional October 12 coup, there has been a sudden turn for the worse.

Probably the first and perhaps the most important twist in the fortunes of the military government came about a little earlier, following president Clinton’s triumphant visit to India, followed by what one can only call a total disaster in public relations in Islamabad. Not only was president Clinton’s arrival in Islamabad an affront to the institutions of the Pakistani state, but to add considerable insult to a painful injury, his dressing down of the Musharraf regime due to its unconstitutional step of terminating democracy, was a rude and hard slap in the face of all those government supporters who were claiming a diplomatic victory prior to the US president’s arrival. Perhaps for the first, only, time many of us unsympathetic to the military takeover and greatly critical of the Musharraf regime were, ironically, in complete agreement with a president of the US.