The way of all dictators

Dictators, even those clothed in democratic raiment, do not give up power voluntarily. Even less do they stand down because of adverse judicial pronouncements. So, few will be in doubt that Gen. Pervez Musharraf has imposed emergency rule in Pakistan and in effect suspended the country's Constitution because he anticipated a negative verdict from the Supreme Court this week on the validity of his re-election as president. That was the one issue President Musharraf did not touch on in his rambling, late-night address to his countrymen on Saturday, replete as it was with transparent duplicities of the kind that Indira Gandhi resorted to when she imposed emergency rule in India in 1975. Now, as then, a personal crisis has been transformed into a systemic one. And so it is no surprise that the Chief Justice, whose short-lived dismissal in March led to widespread protests and crystallised opposition to President Musharraf, has now been replaced and jailed, while the judiciary and media have been blamed for creating problems in a context where the general spoke of the spread of terrorism in the country. This transferring of blame carries little conviction after the general has had eight years of virtually untrammelled power, during which he has rarely been single-minded in his own "war on terror"; indeed, he used Islamists and jihadi elements for his own ends (as in Kashmir) till they turned on him. This is of a piece with the duplicity that has been in evidence on other issues "" like the failure to deliver on the repeated promise to shed his uniform and appoint a new chief of army staff. Pakistan's self-styled Ataturk has therefore been hoist with his own petard, and it is now clear that the only way in which he will leave the scene is like all other dictators, feet first.

What does that mean for Pakistan? The promise that the disruption of normalcy will be only for a brief interregnum is the standard hope held out by all dictators when they seize power. But if indeed it was necessary to impose emergency rule because of the spread of terrorism in the country, it is inconceivable that the problem can be tackled in weeks or months. In fact, a determined assault on terrorist elements will only heighten conflict in the initial weeks. On the other hand, if all that President Musharraf wants to do is to get around an inconvenient Supreme Court, then it is possible that he will revert to status quo ante as soon as he has arranged matters to get rid of that problem. However, the very fact of his having imposed emergency rule will have polarised public opinion within Pakistan to a degree that will frustrate President Musharraf's search for a middle ground, and he will then have to fall back on the support of a "king's party" which has precisely the Islamist elements that he professes to want to put down. For all these contradictions, it is far from clear that the mild western expressions of disapproval will deter the general from doing exactly as he wants. Politicians with a mass base will be allowed to function only if they agree to function within the boundaries defined by the general. The bottom line therefore is that Pakistan has taken a huge step backward, and in doing so it has slipped further into instability and therefore faces renewed threats to the cohesiveness of the state in a very troubled neighbourhood.