When is he going?" asked a middle-aged man in fluent English at the Karachi international airport. Another serving in the customs department at the same airfield wondered whether President General Pervez Musharraf would ever doff his military uniform and contest a proper and constitutionally correct presidential election once free and fair polls for the new assemblies are held and the lawmakers are able to freely exercise their right to vote for the president of their choice.

One comes across such comments at every place nowadays and most commentators turn out to be anti-Musharraf. Opposition to Musharraf has increased manifold in the wake of his dramatic November 3 decision to impose a state of emergency in Pakistan and abrogate the Constitution in a bid to pre-empt the anticipated Supreme Court's judgement disqualifying him from contesting the presidential election while still in military uniform.

Such is the level of hatred towards him among a section of the population that they prematurely started distributing sweets and celebrating some days ago after rumours began circulating that Musharraf had been ousted and put under house arrest.

Musharraf, however, still believes he enjoys popular support and that his move to enforce emergency is backed by majority of Pakistanis. It was unbelievable to hear him claim in a recent interview with a foreign media organisation that enforcement of emergency was a popular move as many people had commented that this decision should have been taken much earlier to tackle terrorists and restore peace in insurgency-hit places in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and elsewhere in Pakistan.

No doubt such statements were made by certain people and duly reported by the state-run Pakistan Television, which alone is now available to bitter viewers at home after the privately-owned independent TV channels were banned, but most of them are supporters of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Qaid-e-Azam (PML-Q) and other allied parties. People with opposite viewpoints are rarely invited or shown on the state-run TV channel and other pro-government media outlets.

Enough evidence

That the president of Pakistan and the Chief of Army Staff after remaining in power for eight long years still thinks on these lines is enough evidence that he has lost touch with ground realities. After all, a popular leader would not shy away from holding free and transparent presidential and assembly elections in keeping with constitutional requirements. Any president sure of his support among the people would not invoke emergency, send independent judges home, place the media under curbs, resort frequently to extra-constitutional means to stifle dissent by political workers, lawyers and other members of the intelligentsia and imprison all those who disagree with him.

These are the actions of a man desperately trying to hang on to power by using different pretexts, one being the claim that imposition of emergency would contribute to actively pursuing the "war on terror". The president-cum-army chief had unparalleled powers all these years to fight terrorists and domestic uneasiness over the tactics used in the US-led "war on terror".

In fact, no major change in Pakistan's anti-terrorism and anti-extremism policy has taken place since the enforcement of emergency and the ongoing military campaign by Pakistan Army in Swat and Shangla districts had to be launched because soldiers from the paramilitary Frontier Corps and Frontier Constabulary were refusing to fight fellow Pashtuns and Muslims and were instead surrendering in droves. This was causing embarrassment to the government and the military at a time when the militants, or Pakistani Taliban, were capturing towns and villages in Swat and Shangla without facing any resistance and setting up a parallel administration.

And another cause of embarrassment for Musharraf and his government was the exchange of prisoners with tribal Islamic militants led by Baitullah Mahsud in South Waziristan. Soon after imposition of emergency, the government had to release 28 militants, three of whom had been sentenced to 24 years rigorous imprisonment on terrorism charges after recovery of suicide jackets from their possession, to seek release of around 250 Pakistan Army soldiers who had surrendered nine weeks ago to Baitullah Mahsud's Pakistani Taliban without firing a single shot.

Though government functionaries are issuing denials, reports have surfaced that certain known Afghan Taliban apprehended in Pakistan were also freed on the demand of Baitullah Mahsud due to the simple fact that the Musharraf government was desperate to win freedom for its troops under the custody of militants since August 30 and quickly settle the issue that was causing huge embarrassment to the military authorities.

Apart from the 619,000 Pakistani troops that are under his command, others supporting him are politicians who have benefited from his rule and want to be re-elected with some generous, state-sponsored help from the uniformed president.

Dwindling

Their numbers are dwindling even though certain politicians and some allies belonging to smaller political parties cannot possibly abandon Musharraf now as this could throw them into the political wilderness and damage their chances of re-election to assemblies. These groups need political crutches offered by Musharraf to compete with popular political parties such as Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples' Party.

In comparison, an overwhelming majority of Pakistanis have had enough of Musharraf and would like him to quit. The religious forces were already up in arms against him for pursuing pro-US policies and making Pakistan a vital component of the US-led "war on terror". Now the secular, liberal and leftists forces too have declared war on Musharraf and are demanding his resignation. Sensing the mood of the people, Bhutto too has announced giving up on her efforts to make a power-sharing deal with him and is now moving close to other opposition groups for uniting in a grand anti-Musharraf alliance. Once that happens, Musharraf would come under tremendous domestic as well as international pressure to quit.

Any popular support that he believes he still possesses would then vanish into thin air.