Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule over the country November 3, suspending the constitution and shutting down all independent media outlets. While some critics from around the globe have called this the desperate act of a weakened leader, Musharraf affirms that he is doing what is necessary to save his country from inner conflict and ultimately preserve democracy. To help sort through the complex situation in Pakistan, UVA politics professor John Echeverri-Gent provides his thoughts and insight.
UVA politics professor John Echeverri-Gent says unless the U.S. takes a stronger stand against Musharraf, "we may come out on the wrong side of history here." |
C-VILLE: How dire is the current situation in Pakistan? Would you characterize General Musharraf’s declaration of emergency rule as having thrown the country into a constitutional crisis?
Echeverri-Gent: I would say that it actually is a very dire situation. President Musharraf has very rapidly dwindling popular support. The opinion polls I’ve seen would give him a popular approval rating of less than 20 percent. And not only does he have a low rating, but it’s rapidly declining. If we look at this over the past year, in March he attempted to oust the chief justice of the supreme court. He was forced by an order of the supreme court in July to restore the chief justice after a series of protests. Now, he has once again suspended the constitution. He has removed 12 members of the supreme court. This is a first in that this is a coup against his own government. The reason apparently, as has been reported by a number of sources, is that the supreme court was ready to rule his presidential reelection invalid and unconstitutional. By taking this action, he’s already reduced further his base of popular support. In the last few days, we’ve seen protests not only by the lawyers, but now we’re starting to see the oppositional political parties get mobilized. If the political parties get involved, we’re going to see a broad spread of mobilization among the population. This is going to cause real problems for General Musharraf to remain in power.
Given that Pakistan’s constitution has been suspended and all non-state communications have been cut, how fair can upcoming parliamentary elections be in a return to democracy?
We don’t know exactly if and when there will be elections. The government of Pakistan has given out different signals as to whether there would be elections as scheduled or if they might be postponed. We know that General Musharraf’s government has a history of promising elections and a return to democracy and then not delivering that promise. We do know that in the past—here I’m referring in particular to the elections in October 2002—that when there were elections held, they were held on terms that clearly biased the results.
What’s interesting here is that the results in the 2002 elections were biased against the mainstream political parties. The elections were biased against them, and who were they biased in favor of? They were actually biased in favor of the religious parties who for the first time gained control over one provincial legislature. They have their best showing in any parliamentary election in the 2002 elections in large part because of the measures General Musharraf took to limit the effectiveness of the mainstream parties.
U.S. leaders have openly condemned General Musharraf’s decision. How far can the U.S. go to censure Pakistan, considering its active role as an ally in the "war on terror"?
There has been no sanction that has been threatened to General Musharraf, at least in public. This puts the United States in a very awkward position because on the one hand the whole Bush doctrine—as he enunciated in his 2005 inaugural address—was that the United States stands for freedom and the spread of democracy throughout the world. What has been clear by general Musharraf’s actions is that he has taken Pakistan away from democracy.
And so, the United States is really put in an awkward position. In terms of what the United States can do, we have to realize we have serious limitations here. We do have the sanction of stopping financial aid. Since 9/11, we’ve given Pakistan approximately $11 billion in foreign assistance. $10 billion of that has gone directly to the military. Only approximately $1 billion has gone to the conventional foreign aid. That’s one possible sanction, but other than that, there are real limits to what we can do. That said, if we were to take a stand condemning Musharraf’s action, at least that would separate us from supporting an increasingly unpopular dictator. Unless we do that, we may come out on the wrong side of history here. Musharraf’s rule is becoming increasingly tenuous, and it depends almost exclusively on the military.
Could instability as a result of a rising Islamic movement in the country spread to neighboring Afghanistan and India?
It has already spread elsewhere in that Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are based in Pakistan. They’re using that as a base to carry out military actions in Afghanistan. The most serious way we’ll see it spreading is throughout Pakistan. Very recently, it was very much confined to the small, regional area in northwest Pakistan. In the last month, we’ve seen the actions of militants spread. We’ve seen also the inability of the Pakistan military to effectively fight Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in the northwest frontier province.
One of the things to me that is very concerning is that in light of the military’s declining ability to deal with the Islamic militants, if we have in power an increasingly unpopular military dictator, then that is a recipe for instability in Pakistan. The leaders of the religious parties have also issued protests against General Musharraf. So we have not only the mainstream, more liberal parties protesting against Musharraf, who are long-standing opponents of Musharraf, protesting against him.
The situation has some very eerie parallels with the situation in Iran in the late 1970s, where you had an increasingly unpopular dictator trying to regain power. What you had, if you recall in Iran, there was a widespread popular movement against the Shah. It wasn’t clear initially that the clerics were going to be able to seize control over the movement. It also wasn’t clear that they controlled a majority of the people who were protesting against the Shah, but they were able to take advantage of various opportunities that were provided by the movement against the Shah to take control of the government. That is the danger here in Pakistan as well. That is especially troublesome because Pakistan is the only Muslim country at this point that has nuclear weapons.
Are the Pakistani people better off now that they were when General Musharraf took control via a coup in 1999? How long can he stay in power and what will his legacy be?
General Musharraf has been, in some ways, successful as a ruler, especially in terms of the Pakistani economy. In an economic sense, people are better off. There’s another change that took place under General Musharraf, and that’s the flowering of the private press, in particular private television stations. There are now over 30 private television stations in Pakistan. Musharraf, with his recent action, has closed all of them down. Nevertheless there was this flowering, and that was another development that people in Pakistani society appreciated.
Now Musharraf has taken actions that threaten the economic welfare of the country, and he’s closed down the presses. In a way, he’s threatened his best accomplishments—in a sense, shot himself in the foot. As far as how long he’s likely to be able to continue to survive, I think that nobody can really say for certain. For now, he’s put his closest supporters in high positions in the military, and they are secure and seem to be supportive of him. But, we have this growing opposition movement.
It’s hard to tell how effective the government actions to suppress the movement are going to be. But if the movement continues and grows, if the mainstream political parties succeed in mobilizing segments of the public that go beyond the layers, I think what will happen is support within the military, which is key in the continuation of Musharraf’s regime, is likely to erode over time. If he does leave power, it’s likely to be because people in the military will have grown tired of trying to suppress a popular movement. That’ll, in one way or another, force him to resign and leave office.
