Devil’s advocate

Who really is playing that role for Musharraf?

The army chief of Pakistan, accompanied by a general, shouts out at the air traffic controller on October 12, 1999, from the cockpit of the PIA plane he is on board, and orders the CAA regime to sanction an immediate landing of the plane coming home from Sri Lanka.

The plane lands, but only after Jinnah international airport gets taken over by the foot soldiers of Pakistan army, in reaction to the detestable act of not allowing their boss to land in the jurisdiction of a state over whose borders his army mostly enjoys a monopoly of ‘violence’ and pays for the same in blood.

With the army boasting plenty of experience in governing over Pakistan and experiencing no shortage of lawyers and politicians boasting of their aristocratic blood and hence as they reckon, knowledge over everyone else with a pinch of racism, reinforced for themselves by the fact that they are monetarily superior and can woo opportunists towards themselves with fiat currencies and Musharraf being no genius, it was but natural that writing about Mush would not have had been any different.

I hail Musharraf for coming back to Pakistan. His exile was doing more harm to his commando credentials than his return would ever hurt or dent his self esteem. It is being rightly said that Mush is playing in the wrong hands. The tougher things get for him, the more isolation he witnesses from those who clowned around him, enjoying his patronage when he was the most powerful man in and of the polity we call Pakistan.

Article 6 is no joke and I respect it. However, listening and reading dozens of articles hell bent against Mush with an underlying thesis that “it’s great to go around and bad mouth a man when it is in fashion and no one would come and kill you for the same” is ridiculous.

Try Taliban for a change. Try hanging those who kill in the name of religion.

The Lal Masjid episode was the right thing to do and even the Supreme Court judges, inhabitants of Islamabad, would vouch that repercussion of allowing the students to do what they were doing then, would have been a decree for mutating Islamabad into Kabul. Lal Masjid case would not land Mush into legal troubles, nor would Bugti hang Musharraf. BB’s ghost may haunt him.

In a nutshell, the 1999 coup won’t harm him as it was later sanctioned by the Supreme Court and the sanction bears the sign of the current Chief Justice of Pakistan. That’s not a worry of mine for Mush too.

The promulgation of emergency in 2007 naturally attracts the bias of our judiciary and if Mushrraf has got to fend himself against an illegal act of all “illegal” acts, given he enjoyed a general immunity as president, he should immediately show the door to Ahmed Raza Kasuri. Kasuri is no great a brain, let alone an able or an honest lawyer. He is just a below average lawyer who enjoys his status due to unfortunate twists of history in the 70’s. He has been more of a trouble for the country than a good. He treats the judges as paid clerks of a polity of whom he is a delusional royal. He is representing Mush to have his name on the ‘mother of all constitutional cases’ so far. He won’t care if Mush is somehow hanged. He cares for his money and his fame. After Mush escaped the Islamabad High Court that day, something which he was ill advised to do, Kasuri went to the Supreme Court and mocked the judges saying ‘Mush is enjoying cigars and coffee at his farmhouse despite your orders’. The next day the SC orders to lock up Mush in two of the rooms of his huge farm house with the Adialians managing his kitchen.

Moreover, Kasuri should not have blurted “Pandora Box, Pandora Box” in public. The judges know that they are part of the Pandora Box and hence any sane mediator between the ex-general the SC would know that the only “win-win” solution for the two is to burn the case out rather than cover up for one’s legal shallowness by shouting like a rogue on TV with the Supreme Court in the background.

Lastly, Kasuri crying on TV: either he has realised that he cannot go on fooling Musharraf that his lawyer is good for nothing and hence is getting desperate, or if he played a prank, he missed the mark by a mile. Mr Kasuri, why should Mush be allowed to go meet his mother when Mian sahib was not even allowed to attend the last rites of his father and why should Mush be allowed to go when Zardari four days before the death of his mother requested to meet her but was not allowed?

Zardari was allowed to attend the funeral of her mother for two hours though.

What precedents, Mr Kasuri? And as for you, Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf, a man is known by the company he keeps. Wake up. Show the devil’s advocate a door.