President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has declared a state of emergency in Pakistan on Saturday. It has now been announced at PTV. The emergency decision comes ahead of a crucial Supreme Court decision on whether to overturn his recent election win.
The news caster at PTV didn’t give any reasons for emergency but read the following text:
The chief of army staff has proclaimed a state of emergency and issued a provisional constitutional order.
Earlier, Pakistan’s private TV channels had suddenly gone off-air amid speculations that emergency was going to be imposed.
An earlier Reuters report which was among the first to break the news read:
Private television channels Geo News and Dawn News both ran reports quoting unnamed sources as saying the government had made its decision. Speculation has been rife that Musharraf, who is awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on whether he was eligible to run for re-election last month while still army chief, might impose emergency rule or martial law
This has not been the first time that government thought about imposing emergency. The idea has been flirted with from time to time. Rumors kept appearing from time to time from as early as August 8, 2007. We also had a post on this topic then.
According to CNN:
The Supreme Court has declared the state of emergency illegal, claiming Musharraf had no power to suspend the constitution, Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry told CNN.
People were already sensing something was about to happen when Benazir suddenly left the country two days ago without even going to other provinces of the country except Sindh. It may be true that she indeed left Pakistan to be with her ailing mother but it never stops people from speculating. Also the earlier news where Government circles were advising Benazir not to come to Pakistan before Supreme Court decision now seem to put missing links to a continuum.
According to Washington Post news:
The United States had tried to pressure Musharraf on Friday to avoid declaring emergency rule or martial law. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday sent a warning to Musharraf not to take authoritarian measures to hold on to power. “I think it would be quite obvious that the United States would not be supportive of extra-constitutional means,” Rice said. “Pakistan needs to prepare for and hold free and fair elections.” That message was followed by a previously scheduled meeting between Musharraf and Adm. William J. Fallon, chief of the U.S. Central Command.
Complete text of emergency declaration can be read here
@ Harris Sadique
I have gone through the comment given by you. Well I would like to say only one thing that you can not say that a sleepy nation will never woke up even the worst is given to them. As far as CJ is concerned its not a big deal that he taken oath as CJ under PCO 1999 but refused it this time. Dear its called revolution and it can come at any time. You must be knowing that change of thoughts and actions is possible when you are given a direction by the trust of thousands of people. I m agreed to you that he may taken so many decisions that were against democracy and rule of law but it was prior to his exile from the court by President.
It happens that when scores of people trust you it become difficult to go against the law. He is the person followed by lawyers not the general public. His followers knows constitution and law just like him so they can change their direction if he will go against the law.
Lawyers have proved that educated nation can never be played by any politician or dictator because of having good deal of information about their rights.
Dilemma is this that even our educated young generation dont know what are the basic rights given to them by the constitution and what is the importance of supermacy of constitution..?
If we want to live like a lively nation first we have to educate our masses and its not much difficult but only if our youth is interested in it and make their efforts.
No doubt that our both the major parties PPP and PML dont owe the leaders to run the affairs democratically because BB lived abroad while there was Musharaf’s rule and now she came back to have a hand on chair. Pakistan dont need such leaders who come to Pakistan only for ruling it while they spend their time out of the country when they are not in the power.
NS accepted exile to Saudi Arabia to save himself from jail culture and wrath of the ruling dictator. Do we need such leaders…?
No……!
we have to say simply No to such leaders who play with the emotions of simple people for their lust of power. They have no passion for bringing progress in the country yes they are passionate to rule the country and loot it with both hands.
We should see towards people like Imran Khan who are devoted and Pakistan oriented. He want to work for the country and he is the person can bring a wave of change in the destiny of this poorly managed country.
There is a very simple solution to all this nonsense….General should arrest Bhutto and she should be tried for all charges against her and then the general should call a fair election without any of these thugs and thieves (Bhutto and Sharif)…….and then the general should resign….that would be the only decent thing to do …….God Help Pakistan
Editorial, The News, Nov. 6, 2007
US role & reaction
The United States is in a real soup after the second Musharraf coup against his own self. Statements of top US leaders betray a sense of helplessness in the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has come out strongly demanding that Musharraf should quit his army post and Pakistan should move towards elections under the constitution. She also said America would review its aid package to Pakistan and implicitly, but belatedly, also admitted to a serious US policy flaw in relying too much on Musharraf which Washington has been doing for the past six years. Defence Secretary Robert Gates on Monday asked Musharraf to return his country to a law-based, constitutional and democratic rule as soon as possible saying that the state of emergency and suspension of the constitution was a disturbing development. A White House spokesman chipped in, saying that the move was unfortunate. The defence secretary further said that the US was reviewing all assistance programmes and the Pentagon also later said that it was suspending its annual defence talks in Islamabad scheduled to begin today. Influential US senators have been talking even tougher. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democratic Senator Joe Biden, has been severely critical of the Bush administration’s “Musharraf policy” saying that this is why Washington’s options are now limited. He also said that he would be pushing the US president for a review of the relationship to make it focus on channelling aid to help moderates in Pakistan.
Another influential member of the US Senate, Republican Senator Arlen Specter said he would not support American aid to Pakistan with the new development since these were against the cause of democracy. The senator said that America needed to get “very tough with the dictator”. It should be remembered that these are not empty words, because those who have spoken them do have the power to influence policymaking in America. Many US think-tanks and analysts had been for days cautioning the Bush administration of the consequences of a policy that relied too much on a dictator who was fast losing popularity and his grip on power — and their warnings have now become reality. A change in US policy is thus very much on the cards, especially when one considers that both houses of Congress are controlled by the Democrats, who have been at odds with President Bush over his handling of the war on terror and specifically Pakistan. Besides, many Americans will question the sending of billions of taxpayer dollars to prop a military dictator who has ravaged the constitution and trampled on human rights and the press in his own country. It would be fair to say that Washington’s continued display of support for General Musharraf is crucial to his survival. The nature of the emergency — which is nothing more nor less than a severe martial law — is such that this support may well be coming to an end.
The US is only worried about the war on terror and the 24,000 US troops next to the troubled Pakistani tribal areas. If Washington gets assurances from Pakistani power brokers and stakeholders that its interests will be watched, personalities may no longer be of interest to it. Right or wrong, the US has acquired a balancing role in Pakistan’s domestic power games. It is time now that it stood on the side of democracy and stopped working with an autocrat whose only objective seems to be to preserve his own rule at any cost, regardless of what happens to his country and its people.
Editorial, The News, Nov 6, 2007
Filling the jails
The country’s jails are fast filling up as ever greater numbers of miscreants and extremists, dangerous men and women all, arrive at their gates. They come by the van-load, bumped and bruised, battered and beaten, having been detained after being caught red-handed in the act of committing a felony — a felony usually taking the form of standing in the road and waving a banner or, at the more serious end of the spectrum, shouting a slogan. This includes hundreds of lawyers who have been brutally beaten and arrested nationwide as well as members of civil society voicing their protest against the whims of one man bent on pushing the country to ruin. Some of those newly sampling life in jail have clearly crossed the boundary into out-and-out terrorism — they have declared themselves to be politicians, no less, and have been duly carried off to await an uncertain fate.
Curiously, none of these dangers to the security of the nation appear to have been — at the time of their arrest or detention — in possession of anything more lethal than a fine legal mind, a couple of ball-pens and some hastily scribbled notes. Some of them come equipped with the kind of intellect that can stop a man dead in his tracks at a hundred meters. Others possess yet more dangerous weaponry — they have the ability to string half-a-dozen words together coherently whilst at the same time holding several conflicting ideas in their head at the same time — self-evidently, they are all individuals likely to shake the pillars of society to their foundations. Which is why they are being locked up – in a most ruthless manner by the police, the veritable handmaiden of the dictatorship, which is now emboldened by the strong defence that the president took for them in his ‘emergency proclamation’.
Yet more curiously, there appears to be a positive dearth of arrests of those who publicly carry a range of exploding and projectile weaponry, are unafraid to use it against officers of the state and the citizenry, and are able to flout any and every law that the land may have with complete impunity and cut the heads from those who displease them. These paragons of virtue regularly issue threats to kill, have by their own admission carried out those threats and promise to deliver more of the same in the future. Clearly, these men present no threat whatsoever to the state, which has itself displayed its gratitude by ceding large tracts of scenic countryside and entire local administrations into their tender care.
Little of this will have been seen by the average citizen over the last three days as the electronic media has been called into the headmaster’s office for a severe talking-to on the matter of what they can or cannot report or comment on. Screens will remain dark until the powers that be and the broadcasters reach an accommodation. The print media are feeling a cautious way forward in the new environment and newspapers are now the most accessible news source — in a country where some 60 per cent of the population is illiterate. It might be reasonably wondered how long it will be before their pages start appearing with large blank areas — presumably put there for people unable to read.
The old adage ‘Don’t shoot me I’m only the messenger’ seems to have failed to surface in the collective minds of the latest dispensation, and the Orwellian prospect of the nation’s best and brightest landing up behind bars while self-confessed cold-blooded murderers wander at will, looms large for all to see. Or not. Shooting the messenger is only an option when you don’t want to hear the news he bears, but to quote another equally ancient adage — ‘There are none so deaf as those who don’t want to hear.’
Hear CJP addressign lawyers’ rally:
http://free-pakistan.blogspot.com/2007/11/chief-ju stice-iftikhar-muhammad.html
if emergency is really such a horrible thing, why dont people just move out into the street and take on the establishment. i know it is not as simple as it sounds. for the common, poor and the powerless even ‘normalcy’ is indeed an emergency. and this holds true for any country in south Asia. if anything, imposing emergency only shows that the balancing act of keeping the vested interests satisfied has gone wrong. after all the tradition of dictatorship has been far more stronger than democracy.
sorry to say but sentiments like “Can we find a single Gentleman to lead this nation out of chaos, into a stable, better future ?” ,only serve to strengthen the cult of dictators. unless people take up the task of cultivating democratic culture within the society itself, the scourge of dictatorship would never go. we the people of south Asia tend to indulge more in hero-worship than nourish institutions.
off course, i feel sorry for the people of Pakistan.
Bush admin asking Musy to take off his wardi,
The Americans have no shame asking a Gentleman
General to take off his clothes, as if he would be hidding
AMD under his………. and thats too, asked by a Lady
spokeswoman, For God’s sake have some respect, are
you Americans so frustrated ? Striptease is really your
CULTURE.
Now the moderates ( not BB) should come out
and handle the situation intelligently, the extremism
from left and right must be crushed !!
Pakistan’s Ideology had been tarnished by these
animals called extremists.