Virtually!

People have conspiracy theories. I have mine and it is too irresistable to keep. So here I go.

Pakistan has a new political setup. Yousuf Raza Gilani, of the PPP ( Bhutto loyalist ) is the prime minister which the combined opposition has been able to put up. He has begun by making the right noises like releasing the principal crusader against Musharraf, The Deposed Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikar Chaudhry and other members of the judiciary. The people of Pakistan have found the answer to the unpopular rule of Musharraff in this new setup, since its not a government lead by him but his die hard opposition.

In all of this try figuring out what happenned to Musharraf or what might happen to him in the future. … my guess is .. “Nothing”. He cannot be challenged in the new setup as he is not answerable to the political system. This has always been the case with the army of Pakistan. They have their own writ and they stand united behind their leader. A hard lesson learnt from the war of 1972. Even if anything happens, it will take time. As is the case within a democratic setup, atleast in this part of the world.

Musharraff knows that he cannot run the country with the army alone. He failed doing that. So lets look at what he tried doing.

Plan 1: A government was setup with a quasi political party full of his comrades running the government. But soon people saw through the plan and it backfired. He needed a credible government in the eyes of the people of pakistan and the world in general. At the same time he needed some form of control on the government as it could pose a risk to his continuity in power. Any government could not come from his stable else its credibility will be questioned. The next plan :).

Plan 2: He tried selectively bringing in Benazir Bhutto into the political arrangement. But suddenly realized that her credibility was compromised and may not yield the kind alternative he wanted. So he allowed Nawaz Sharif back. But allowing him back only increased popularity of Nawaz’s party and that would have been too uncomfortable for him. The only alternative was to get back credibility to Bhutto’s party. How could he do that? .. rest is history. Benazir’s assassination created a gaint sympathy wave and enabled Bhutto’s PPP to have more seats than Nawaz’s PML in the parliament. Thus by not allowing any of them to get a majority he succeeded in decreasing the ability of any unilateral action by each of the political parties. So now the “government” is a people’s government which has people who are opposed to him but also opposed to each other in power.

What else could have been better for him? A master mind, a shrewd political strategist. I have never seen or heard or read about man like this before. The title “Cockroach” begets him as cockroaches are deemed to survive nuclear disasters.