Dangerous development

Pakistan woke to a fresh spell of emergency rule - the third in its turbulent history - after General Pervez Musharraf, who already enjoys unprecedented powers as president, army chief and supreme commander of the armed forces, imposed an emergency.

This time, however, it may not be as easy to suppress the people's will.

While the general was swift to reassure his bewildered nation that "Pakistan comes first", that parliament and assemblies remain intact even if the constitution is in abeyance, he has cracked down on the two elements that gave his regime the veneer of democracy - a free press and an independent judiciary.

Given the climate of fear and uncertainty that prevails amid the suspension of civil liberties and despite detaining arch enemy Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and persuading a handful of judges to back the Provisional Constitutional Order, the great majority of lawyers are unlikely to stay quiescent.

In failing to mention elections during his address to the nation, the only mechanism that can usher in a representative democracy, and raising the prospect of yet another rigged poll and a manufactured verdict, the lawyers may draw support from powerful leader Benazir Bhutto whose unnatural deal with Musharraf brokered by Washington has unravelled. She like others in the opposition reject such polls.

Indeed, the emergency may finally fuse together a fractured opposition leaving the general to face the dilemma on how to balance his own interests against those of his American benefactors, alone.

Most Pakistanis recognise the emergency has little to do with unrest in the border areas and more with the chief justice's impending verdict voiding Musharraf's re-election as president. As the general slams everyone but himself for the rising terror graph, most people equate his army diktat with their nation's dangerous polarisation, and will lay the blame for its current troubles squarely at his door.