Saeed Minhas
Islamabad– Parliamentarians continue to kill their time in the halls of National Assembly and Senate, as their fate was being discussed by the President Gen. Musharraf through backdoor contacts with the exiled leaders Nawaz Sharif, Benazir Bhutto, Altaf Hussain and last but not the least with his mentors in Washington.
Freshly appointed American ambassador to Pakistan Anne Peterson rushed back to Washington to exchange idea bags with Condoleezza Rice and Richard Boucher. Our friends in Washington informed that President Bush is having tough time in deciding the fate of Gen. Musharraf due to uneasy situation in Afghanistan, failed Jirga talks and overall faltering war on terrorism.
President Bush’s advisors including the deputy foreign secretary Negroponte with all his intelligence background and hawkish Dick Cheney with all his trigger-happy war-prone mentality are finalizing their plans to take their war to the ultimate high grounds of Pakistan and are in their final stages of taking the Talibans unilaterally because otherwise they might have to face a crushing defeat in the 2008 elections. In this war of survival, sources claim, stakes for Americans are much higher than those of President Gen. Musharraf. Therefore, sources say that if someone is mistaken that Americans are backing Gen. Musharraf because they like him is living in fools’ paradise.
Americans agenda is as they call its damn clear and they want to win and here we must remember the stratfor intelligence report which claims that Americans would like to watch for political stability and incase the same is not seen than for securing the vital nuclear assets of the nation from falling into the hands of religious extremists, they reserve the right to act unilaterally.
The Americans are already in the midst of aligning President Gen. Musharraf with what they think democratic forces like Benazir Bhutto and even Nawaz Sharif through the Royal families of Saudis and UAE. But the deadlock over the issue of uniform of the General which Benazir wants to be doffed to provide her a face-saving power-sharing deal has become a real stumbling block in ensuring their required form of democracy in Pakistan.
Coming back to the back-stage wheeling dealing going on these days, Gen. Musharraf is moving his emissaries including but not limited to Maleeha Lodhi, Mushahid Hussain, Tariq Aziz, many foreign friends and hired lobbyist firms in all directions. Maleeha is constantly hammering the mind of Benazir Bhutto to the extent that BB is learned to have stopped telling anything about deal to any of his own party men. Party’s stalwarts like Makhdoom Amin Faheem, Aitezaz Ahsan, Raza Rabbani and many others are getting all the information about BB’s movements through her media interviews.
Mushahid Hussain, on a self-initiative is busy talking with Shahbaz Sharif and has assured the General that he might be able to persuade the Sharifs for scaling down their ante against Musharraf in lieu of certain concessions. Three references against Nawaz Sharif are part of this campaign while another seven references are in the pipeline against Shahbaz Sharif to show them what state is ready to deal on.
Sharifs are also being pressurized from Saudis, who as we have already written in these columns are not happy with Sharifs for violating their verbal agreement with the Saudis. Resultantly, Saudis have to withdraw state guest house facilities from the remaining members of Sharif family in Jeddah who are currently living in a rented apartment there these days. Gen. Musharraf has used his emissaries besides telephonic and face to face contacts with Saudis to remind them of their verbal agreement of October 1999 through which they managed Sharifs flight out of Pakistan, when they were facing life imprisonment owing to various criminal cases.
Mushahid Hussain has left on Monday night for Dubai to further his efforts, where Sharifs are already having some bitter parleys with the recently released acting president of their League, Javed Hashmi. Some sources are of the view that Javed Hashmi is proving quite a hurdle by Shahbaz Sharif these days, because his latest wife and politically astute lady and author of ‘my feudal lord’ Tehmina is facilitating his husband’s parleys with the establishment for a safe return.
Since Altaf Hussain, whether we accept it or not, is a political force to reckon with and an important balancing tool in the hands of establishment, Gen. Musharraf is keeping him abreast on all the developments. Now comes again the question of how to counter the judiciary’s pomp and flare and for that our moles confirmed that work of Khakis is still in progress.
The deadlock on the judiciary’s front is that government expects the senior judges to forward a proposal for defining the term-time for the Supreme Court’s chief justice so that government can do the needful. The moles say that the judges are happy over the proposal, as many see the chances of getting the high-fly post before their retirement, but fearing the public backlash are not ready to make a formal request and instead want the government to use its executive authority to do the needful.
This needful, moles say is just another and perhaps the major stumbling block in President’s successful take over of the third term. Nevertheless, another effort to put the judiciary against the presidency is almost ready as parliamentary minister Dr Sher Afghan and architect of reference against CJ law minister Wasi Zafar have proposed to bring a new ordinance soon after the current session of the parliament, which is likely to last till 17th of this month, to reverse the orders of the Supreme Court on the issue of registration of votes without ID cards. The proposed draft is likely to make the ID cards mandatory for voter registration and for this would provide extra resources like mobile vans to NADRA so that timely registration of voters before the proposed general elections.
Will it work or ensue another confrontation is something every social animal would love to wait and see in the coming week or so. Instead of commenting on its possible outcomes, its better to test the wisdom of ministers and the General, commented a senior parliamentarian when asked to comment on this proposal.