President Gen. Pervez Musharraf suspended Pakistan's constitution and deployed troops in the capital Saturday, declaring that rising Islamic extremism had forced him to take emergency measures. He also replaced the chief justice and blacked out the independent media that refused to support him.Authorities began rounding up opposition politicians, cut phone lines in Islamabad and took all but state television off air, defying calls from Washington and other Western allies not to take authoritarian measures.
While there have been several suicide bombings in the past few months, some wonder if Musharraf has other reasons for taking such actions:
Musharraf's leadership is threatened by an increasingly defiant Supreme Court, the reemergence of political rival and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and an Islamic movement that has spread to the capital. The Supreme Court was expected to rule soon on the validity of Musharraf's contentious re-election last month.
He's going right ahead with arresting a key political enemy:
Pakistani authorities on Saturday arrested the main lawyer who has been arguing in favour of challenges to President Pervez Musharraf's re-election, private television reported.
Geo television reported that police had detained Aitzaz Ahsan after Musharraf imposed emergency rule on Saturday, just days before the Supreme Court was due to rule on the legality of the October 6 vote.
Ahsan, a former cabinet minister, also successfully defended chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry after Musharraf tried to sack him earlier this year.
Ah, but don't worry. I'm sure the Cheney/Bush Administration will take decisive, moral action.
Or maybe not:
For more than five months the United States has been trying to orchestrate a political transition in Pakistan that would manage to somehow keep Gen. Pervez Musharraf in power without making a mockery of President Bush’s promotion of democracy in the Muslim world.On Saturday, those carefully laid plans fell apart spectacularly. Now the White House is stuck in wait-and-see mode, with limited options and a lack of clarity about the way forward.
General Musharraf’s move to seize emergency powers and abandon the Constitution left Bush administration officials close to their nightmare: an American-backed military dictator who is risking civil instability in a country with nuclear weapons and an increasingly alienated public.
Darn it.
Look, I have no idea if Musharraf is in some way justified, that Pakistan was/is about to tip into the Taliban zone, with all those other Constitutionally vested folks -- judges, lawyers, lawmakers -- poised to deliver the country to the most radical elements. It just stands to reason that fascism is fascism and there's a thick line there.
We have, of course, seen the erosion of this line in our country under President Cheney, who is still surely planning to bomb Iran and expects to somehow get away with it. (He might, we won't.) So how ironic that Musharraf should quote one of our most revered Presidents in suspending his country's rule of law:
Just after midnight, General Musharraf appeared on state-run television. In a 45-minute speech, he said he had declared the emergency to limit terrorist attacks and “preserve the democratic transition that I initiated eight years back.”
He gave no firm date for nationwide elections that had been scheduled for January and said his current Parliament, which he dominates, would remain in place. He did not say how long the state of emergency would be maintained.
The general, dressed in civilian clothes, quoted from Abraham Lincoln, citing the former president’s suspension of some rights during the American Civil War as justification for his own state of emergency.
Our next move?
Do we even have one?
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