Soon we’ll see if Musharraf is a man of his word

When their TV screens suddenly went fuzzy on Saturday afternoon, most Pakistanis felt they had seen it all before. Their country has, after all, spent 33 of its 60 years under military rule. The troops surrounding the TV and radio stations, the phone networks down, the round-up of opponents, the concertina wire across Constitution Avenue blocking off the Presidency, Parliament and Supreme Court . . . all these have been a periodic feature of Pakistan’s politics.

But this time the army chief imposing what amounted to martial law was himself already the President. ‘General Musharraf now has the dubious distinction of being the only man in Pakistan’s history to have suspended the Constitution twice,’ said Husain Haqqani, who has managed to be at various times an adviser to the military, and rival party leaders and former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto.

Unlike previous coups, the main targets of arrest were not political leaders or militants but judges, lawyers and human rights activists. Seven of the Supreme Court’s 11 judges were locked up and the chief justice placed under house arrest. Musharraf’s main aim was to pre-empt a ruling from the Supreme Court this week which had been expected to declare illegal his recent re-election as President.

One of the first to be arrested was Aitzaz Ahsan, president of the Bar Association, who has led the case opposing Musharraf’s re-election. ‘Musharraf is acting like a spoilt child and bad loser,’ he said, speaking by phone from the police station in Islamabad where he was being held. ‘He is holding the whole country hostage to save his position.’

In fact, most of the nation seemed more interested in Pakistan’s cricket tour of rival India which began on Monday. On the BBC website, Pakistanis from across the nation posted messages saying they were so resigned to such events that they had gone back from the announcement of emergency rule to eating their behari kebabs.