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Talibanisation without me, says Musharraf

Nirupama Subramanian

Pakistan President, Prime Minister feel isolated over Chief Justice's suspension issue

ISLAMABAD: A series of crisis meetings between President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz with Pakistan Muslim League parliamentarians aimed at cementing differences within the ruling party over the intensifying troubles for the Government and goad them into showing a united face tells the story of the isolation of Pakistan's two top leaders.

Gen. Musharraf met PML parliamentarians three times in the last week, and Mr. Aziz, twice. Detailed accounts of these meetings published in the Pakistani press have exposed how vulnerable the President and his banker-turned-Prime Minister are feeling as the crisis triggered by the March 9 sacking of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary refuses to abate.

At his last meeting with the ruling party legislators on Friday, Gen. Musharraf is reported to have said that the crisis would blow over soon, that they must now concentrate on general elections, and they should defend his policies during the campaign.

The meetings come against the backdrop of the resentment in the PML that they should have landed in the soup just before elections. Senior PML parliamentarians have gone quiet since the March 9 reference against the Chief Justice, with some distancing themselves from the whole affair. Many have openly complained that they were not taken on board at the time of the reference. There is open dissent in the ranks. In an account that Information Minister Muhammed Ali Durrani has now contested, the News wrote that at a luncheon meeting with parliamentarians on Wednesday, Gen. Musharraf looked "visibly shaken" and said he was "disturbed for the first time". In an outburst against the assembled parliamentarians for not weighing in sufficiently on his side, the President is said to have warned that without his leadership, Pakistan would regress into Talibanisation. He counted the number of occasions since 9/11 that the PML had left him to fight his own battles.

"You do not know the problems Pakistan will face if I am left out. You will see Talibanisation in Lahore and Karachi," he is reported to have told the gathering of 150 parliamentarians, adding "I am not worried about myself. I am fighting your war".

He wanted to know what purpose the parliamentarians served if he had do all the fire-fighting.

But some parliamentarians are reported to have questioned the President back about the wisdom of the new ordinance to curb television programmes, and one even asked why he should put himself out when even a senior leader like Mushahid Hussain Sayed, the party secretary-general, was keeping quiet.

Meanwhile, Mr. Aziz held his own meeting on Friday at which ruling party parliamentarians were handed out copies of the affidavits filed by the heads of Military Intelligence and the Intelligence Bureau in the Supreme Court, so that they were up to date on the Government allegations against the Chief Justice.

But it appears that even the Prime Minister is fighting a lonely battle to defend himself from attempts to pass the buck to him for the March 9 action against the Chief Justice.

A lawyer defending the Government in the Supreme Court against Mr. Chaudhary's petition challenging the reference, made the interesting remark that if the Government lost the case, Mr. Aziz would have to resign as it was on his advice the President acted against the Chief Justice.

At a press conference on Friday, Mr. Aziz said he did not "understand the relevance" of such a remark.

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