Business Recorder editorial Dec 12, 2017

Musharraf’s rantings Hubris can do terrible things to even sensible people. However, when it afflicts someone who on the one hand has an exaggerated view of themselves and their continued importance (although having been left by the wayside by the inexorable march of events), the result can only be described as pitiable. Former president Pervez Musharraf seems to fall into the latter category. To recap briefly, Musharraf and his fellow generals retaliated to his sacking by then prime minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999 as a result of the former’s sabotage of the peace initiative with then Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee through launching the Kargil war by overthrowing the government. Subsequently, a pliant Supreme Court not only endorsed the military coup (a habit our judiciary has not been able to shake off to date), it empowered ‘CEO’ Pervez Musharraf to amend the constitution. Unfortunately Nawaz Sharif’s second stint as prime minister had so alienated and enraged our liberals that they initially leapt lemming-like off the cliff of democracy into Musharraf’s lap. It took eight years of Musharraf being master of all he surveyed before his own misjudgment in first sacking his own appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Iftikhar Chaudhry and then ‘decapitating’ the superior judiciary by dismissing 82 judges proved his hamartia (tragic flaw). The ensuing movement for the restoration of the judiciary spelt the death knell for his regime but he enacted one more gross crime to top the assassination of Nawab Akbar Bugti by the murder of Benazir Bhutto. Musharraf should have counted himself lucky to have been let off and allowed to proceed abroad. Not content with his ‘escape’, the man of irrational hubris attempted a political comeback by returning to the country boasting about the support he enjoyed on Facebook. Floating a stillborn political party did not save him from being arraigned on serious treason and murder charges, all of which his former institution rescued him from on dubious medical grounds. His second ‘escape’ has still not brought home to Musharraf the true lay of the land. Now marginalised in his exile in Dubai, he has fallen into the habit of trying to stay relevant by issuing outlandish statements from time to time, merely to garner attention and headlines for someone clearly a has-been. Recent examples of his twisted logic can be found in his statement the other day professing his ‘love’ for Hafiz Saeed. This is the same man whose outfit he banned while in power, along with some other terrorist organisations. Musharraf has attempted to justify his about turn by arguing that what is going on in Kashmir is not terrorism but a legitimate struggle for self-determination. That may be so, but Hafiz Saeed has proved detrimental to Pakistan-India efforts at normalisation by the attacks in Mumbai in 2008. Unless Musharraf thinks there is also a self-determination movement in Mumbai, clearly the 26/11 attacks were terrorism, pure and simple. As if this did not satisfy the Musharraf bloated ego, he has now railed against the Pakistan government for not siding with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain against Qatar, arguing the first two had always stood by Pakistan whereas Qatar had not. Foolish as this statement is since it enjoins Pakistan to get squeezed between the rivalries in the Arab world, not to mention the Saudi-led drive against Iran, it does not need an Einstein to figure out that this is not in Pakistan’s best interests, especially when we already have our plate full of problems. The hardest thing for a person of irrational self-esteem is to recognize reality. We have had more than our share of such characters in our tragic history. Musharraf we hope is the last in that sorry lineup. The man should either seek medical help or at the very least friendly advice to let sleeping dogs lie. Otherwise a fugitive from justice and a former military dictator may soon find the law of diminishing returns attracting his foolish and outlandish publicity-seeking all-too-frequent pronouncements.