Impeaching Gen. Musharraf? Is This For Real?

Posted on August 6, 2008
Filed Under >Adil Najam, ATP Poll, People, Politics
153 Comments
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Adil Najam

What lies in Gen. Musharraf's Future?Since yesterday the “I” word – impeachment – has begun to be thrown around a lot.

Some quarters seem to think that it just happen this time. Others suggest that it is more talk than action and the numbers needed to pull this are still not there.

Coming out of the “critical” Nawaz Sharif-Asif Zardari meetings one keeps wondering how much of this is an effort to keep the coalition going and how much is a real push to change the essential political equations of Pakistan. There are reports that Gen. Musharraf is taking this move seriously enough to cancel his trip to China (to attend the Olympics opening ceremony). On the other hand some of Gen. Musharraf’s supporters are claiming that no such cancellation has happened. We do know, however, that he is taking this challenge seriously and lining up his supporters.

All in all, there is too much noise to say what is happening. But something is clearly happening. Does the PPP-PML(N) have the numbers they need to go ahead? Does the President have the numbers he needs to stop it? And what of all the external actors and where they may lean, why and for what?

Interestingly, we had run a ATP Poll back in June asking you what you thought would have happened to Gen. Musharraf by October 2008? The majority (38%) had thought that he would be impeached by then. A significant number (31%) thought that by October 2008 we woudl be still muddling through as we are now.

We do not intend to open the Poll again, but it does seem that either of those two answers could turn out to be true again. Indeed, even our earlier Poll on the subject, from October 2007, may still be relevant in its results!

The Future of Pakistan's politics

So, since we can’t make full sense of exactly what all of this adds up to, we thought we woudl ask our best source: You. What do you think? What is happening? What might happen? And why?

153 responses to “Impeaching Gen. Musharraf? Is This For Real?”

  1. Hilal says:

    AN OBSERVATION

    -Zawahiri is blaming President Musharaf

    -People who were pressing the officials to take action against Lal Masjid problem now accusing President Musharaf for the operation by mentioning the innocent girls and people been killed (or Shahid according to them, without knowing the meaning of “Shahid”) and completely ignoring the weapons and armed militants and their forcing people to accept their own version of Shariah (its funny, when it comes to Islam no one stresses Quranic way of life, or say, “according to Quran”, but using the word “Shariah” which is mostly the ideas of individuals during different periods of time!

    -There were series of suicide attacks – has made the life like living hell in Pakistan – till election and the new government (anti- Musharaf ). But now? No suicide bombing (I am glad for that but we have to look into things objectively) even – there are severe operations going on in Bajuar and Swat – isn’t it interesting?

    – Mullah Fazal Rahman (I have intentionally written “Mullah” instead “Maulana”, in fact both are wrong – there was no mention of Maulana Muhammad PBUH or Maulana Abu Bakar or Maulana Umar!!!) of JUI ruling for five years in NWFP and let Mullah Fazlullah (the leader of Taliban in Swat) do what ever he wanted, collecting weapons, organizing force against the government, raising funds and giving safe havens to foreign elements (not to mention stopping girls from Schools and Polio campaign) and now Mullah Fazal Rahman supports NawaZdari in accusing President Musharaf for bad security situation in the country.

    – Take any newspaper in Pakistan and look into the editorials everyday. If you just (for a while) ignore the names of the writers, you will find maximum articles portraying the feelings of the extremists, Talibans and Al Qaida.

    CONCLUSION
    A huge conspiracy is going on against President Musharaf at many fronts. One might be from AL Qaida – Taliban? For his crime of taking hard on militants, destroying their safe heavens, making it difficult to operate from tribal areas inside Afghanistan!

  2. Salman says:

    @ Rizwan,

    “I still believe in Musharraf. Yes he has made mistakes but he is a good human unlike politicians.”

    So you mean to tell us that politicians are not human?

    For anyone that has served in the military, they can certainly attest to the politics that exist within the ranks of the military. So please come back with a better understanding of what you are trying to make a point of.

    For those that have not heard, President Musharraf will be address the nation later today. Lets see what his next move will be.

  3. Rizwan says:

    Only Army is credible institute Pakistan has. Have faith in our army and in army generals. Politicians are good if they are like Imran Khan but if they are like Imran khan they do not get any where. So they are forced to do inhuman acts such as killing , kidnaping , torching , rape and some time taking over others land.
    Musharraf made mistakes but how about these politicians? I believe Pakistan was on right track right before Lal Musjid Incident , One these politicians gave wrong advices to Musharraf, 2ndly enemy of Musharraf woke up to go after him such as ctbt ( choti tind Bari Tind ) Sharif brothers.
    As Edhi the most credible personality in Pakistan said. They all should work together to save Pakistan from outsiders.

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