The party is over for Musharraf

The most loved jihad is to speak the truth before an unjust ruler. This is a saying by the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). Thousands of people in Pakistan have done exactly what has been ordained. They have staged protests against the emergency-cum-martial law rule which General Pervez Musharraf imposed to avoid facing the judgment on his election as president when he remains a government servant.

The intelligentsia is at the forefront of the protest. Lawyers, doctors and journalists have come out in the open to agitate against the suppression of even the semblance of democracy. The government's reaction has been savage and brutal. It has specially picked up for punishment those lawyers who had won the battle for the reinstatement of Chief Justice Mohammad Iftikhar Chaudhry. Some of them have been dragged in the bazaars of Lahore and Karachi, an inhuman act which only the dictators commit to save their regime. The military even entered the Supreme Court building.

Wrongly deposed Chief Justice Chaudhry, after his house arrest, has said that whatever Musharraf has been doing is illegal. Chaudhry's call to the lawyers to rise up has had a determined response. The majority of judges in the Supreme Court and the high courts of Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and the North Western Frontier Province have refused to take the new oath as ordered by the government. There had been a few demonstrations during the regimes of Chief Martial Law administrators General Ayoub Khan and General Zia ul Haq.

Even Musharraf himself experienced it some time ago. But never before has the defiance been so widespread, so resolute and so persistent. People in Pakistan, who have been under one military rule or the other for almost 50 years, have shown more bravery than we, living as a democratic nation for the last 60 years, did when the emergency was imposed in India (1975-77).

Apathy

The military rulers in Pakistan should realise that the apathy of the public towards Musharraf will grow as the days go by. Even in the "free and fair" polls, when held, his party - the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid) - may not be anywhere in the picture. This will be the people's catharsis for staying quiet for decades.

True, it may take time to build up a countrywide movement because Pakistan has never gone through a national freedom movement as India did. Opposition leader Aitzaz Ahsan, who had led the protest from the front, has often told me how they are now going through that process. Hats off to them for the fight against the military rulers. I am sorry to see that the political parties have yet to put their act together.

India's reaction to Musharraf's doings is that of horror. There is a widespread sympathy in India for the people of Pakistan. I wonder if New Delhi's policy on Pakistan is being formulated by the government or the Ministry of External Affairs. To refuse a visa to Pakistan's Railways Minister Shaikh Rashid to watch the one-day cricket match at Mohali is to create a point of digression.

It is a thoughtless act at this time, however undesirable Rashid himself is. The role of Benazir Bhutto, chairperson of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), has been disappointing. She was expected to lead the country to a democratic future. The deal she made for a joint civil-military rule is still there because she says she wants to talk to Musharraf. When he has broken the deal by pushing the civil rule aside, she should be standing with other political parties which have shown their determination to fight against Musharraf.

One is getting constant messages from across the border that there are serious differences in the army over what Musharraf has done. The corps commanders have not been kept in the picture. They did not want to write off the civil side completely as Musharraf has done. They reportedly favour the earlier arrangement which had put the civil forces in the front and the military in the background. It looks as if the same arrangement may be tried again, with Musharraf, if possible, or without him if necessary. The danger in what Musharraf has done is that the people's wrath against him might turn into anger against the military rule on the whole.

The beginnings are there but the armed forces are too entrenched to be moved. Yet the possibility that it may happen soon has frightened America. It is putting all the pressure on Musharraf to give up the uniform and hold elections in January as promised earlier. Even the protesters are definite that elections would be held early because of America's pressure. But they, like the rest of the people in Pakistan, are not sure how free and fair they would be despite Washington's promise.

A free election may not see the PPP at the top. It has lost considerably because of Benazir's equivocal attitude towards Musharraf. He himself should realise that the party is over. This emergency-cum-martial law rule has proved to be the last straw on the camel's back. Whatever Musharraf had planned has gone wrong. His exit is only a question of time.

Kuldip Nayar is a former Indian High Commissioner to the UK and a former Rajya Sabha MP.