High drama mixed with farce gripped Pakistan Thursday when a court revoked the bail of former dictator Pervez Musharraf and ordered his arrest.
The ex-army general, facing charges dating back six years, should have been easy to catch. But instead, he managed to escape the Islamabad courtroom when his personal security guards pushed him through a thick crowd and into a waiting black SUV that then bolted out of the court compound and drove him to his fortified, luxury farmhouse on the edge of Islamabad.
Mr. Musharraf, a man who cultivated an image as a fearless strongman, was behind the high walls of his residence Thursday night. Police had set up a cordon around the property and were controlling access.
Millions of Pakistanis watched footage of the 69-year-old Mr. Musharraf hurrying away from the Islamabad High Court, with a crowd of angry, shouting lawyers in his wake. Television stations played and replayed the scene throughout the day. It was a riveting scene – a former dictator on the run, barricaded inside his compound in the middle of a historic general election campaign – and raised questions about how the caretaker government would handle his arrest.
“He declared a few days back that he is willing to go to jail. But instead of going to jail, he used his personal security to escape jail,” said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, professor of political science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.
In a country where the military and ex-army generals are virtually untouchable when it comes to the courts, the sight of a former general fleeing a courtroom to evade arrest was unprecedented. “It marks a new territory in politics, law and judicial proceedings that the culture of impunity is over – particularly for … those who really conquered Pakistan through military intervention and threw the constitution in the dustbin,” Prof. Rais said.
Earlier, the Islamabad court rejected a request to extend Mr. Musharraf’s bail over charges relating to his decision in 2007 when he was president to sack dozens of judges, including the chief justice, and declare a state of emergency. He is also charged with failing to provide adequate security to Pakistan Peoples Party leader Benazir Bhutto on her return to Pakistan and before her assassination at a political rally in December, 2007.
On Friday, Mr. Musharraf’s lawyers are to appeal the charges to Pakistan’s Supreme Court. They are unlikely to find a sympathetic audience.
Many Supreme Court judges, including the chief justice, were placed under house arrest in 2007.
Also on Friday, the chief of the Islamabad police is due in court to explain how his officers allowed Mr. Musharraf to flee the courtroom.
Mr. Musharraf’s escape to his farmhouse was just the first of the surprising twists of the day.
In an offhand comment that was intended to convey Mr. Musharraf’s cool confidence but instead depicted the aging ex-general as out of touch with public anger, Ahmed Raza Kasuri, Mr. Musharraf’s lawyer, told reporters outside the compound gates that Mr. Musharraf was upbeat, “sipping coffee” and smoking a cigar.
Pakistani media did not miss a beat, with one channel airing old photographs of Mr. Musharraf when he was in power – each picture showing the former dictator smoking a cigar and enjoying a laugh.
But Pakistanis are in no laughing mood. Their country faces a resilient insurgency in the tribal areas that has tested its army’s counterinsurgency skills.
The Pakistan Taliban have struck civilian and military targets in a wave of suicide bombings and targeted killings for five years. U.S. drone attacks inside Pakistan are increasingly unpopular. Pakistan’s 180 million people, meanwhile, face regular power cuts and slow economic growth.
Pakistanis are set to vote in national and provincial elections on May 11, marking the first time a civilian government will have scompleted its full five-year term without military intervention.
Mr. Musharraf returned to Pakistan last month after four years in self-imposed exile in London and Dubai. But he faced hostility from many ordinary Pakistanis, who see him as a relic of the past in a country on the verge of achieving its first democratic transfer of power.
A separate court ruling earlier this week dismissed his nomination papers to contest a seat in northwestern Pakistan – his last hope of winning a seat.(JP)
No comments:
Post a Comment