The New York Times March 31, 2007, World View Podcast
CALVIN SIMS. Welcome to the New York Times World View podcast, a weekly conversation with Times foreign correspondents from across the globe.
I’m Calvin Sims of The Times. I spent 10 years as a foreign correspondent for the paper.
This week I speak with Somini Sengupta, Times South Asia bureau chief, about the quandary of Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is facing the most serious challenge yet to his military rule.
First, some background from recent New York Times articles.
Ever since he seized power in a military coup in 1999, General Musharraf has pledged to return Pakistan to democratic rule. But critics say he has repeatedly failed to make good on that promise. While Pakistan has held elections in which Musharraf was elected president, those polls were considered not credible and not transparent. While General Musharraf has allowed opposition parties to participate in elections, the leaders of those parties remain in exile.
In recent weeks, however, since Musharraf fired Pakistan’s top judge, whose rulings had begun to challenge his government, outraged Pakistani lawyers and others have poured into the streets demanding that the general resign. The protests have deeply damaged Musharraf’s standing both at home and abroad.
Somini Sengupta, who covers South Asia for The New York Times from New Delhi, recently returned from a trip to Islamabad. We spoke with her at an airport in India.
Somini, just how angry and frustrated are Pakistanis with General Musharraf these days?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. The level of outrage is unprecedented because it comes from very different quarters of Pakistani society, namely judges who are out in the streets in their black coats and their courtroom attire. And this whole sacking of the chief justice has moved from being just an issue of the independence of the judiciary to really being an issue of how much influence does the army exert and how much influence does — do Pakistanis want the army to exert. So the shorthand of all this has become: Should General Musharraf be allowed to keep on his uniform — which basically means, when his five-year term as president expires in October 2007 should he be allowed to be re-elected president and keep his uniform on? And the chief justice was seen as being a potential hurdle in that presumed plan. And there is wide consensus in Pakistan that that’s the reason that he was sacked.
CALVIN SIMS. How did all this get started? In other words, why did Musharraf move against the country’s top judge? Did the judge do anything in particular to anger him?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. The judge has been, in the last couple of years, taking on the government on a number of things. And it included things like the privatization of its steel mill — of a government steel mill — that the judge threw out. It included questioning the government on the hundreds of disappearances of people who had been picked up, ostensibly in the war against terror. The judge had started to become what Pakistanis are calling an activist judge, an independent judge. And then quite suddenly on March 9, the judge was summoned to army headquarters. And it was shown on television: the judge sitting in his courtroom attire, Musharraf in uniform and he was told essentially that he had a choice: he could resign or he could face charges against him, charges of an unspecified nature. And the judge, surprisingly to most people, said he would not resign; he would take on the challenge of these unspecified charges. And that’s when this saga began. From that point onward, lawyers poured into the streets in protest. Several judges, I think at least seven judges and a deputy attorney general, have resigned. And Musharraf has come really under some very strong criticism from people who had once supported him.
CALVIN SIMS. And we’ve called this the country’s top judge. Is this the head of the supreme court? How would we characterize this judge?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. He is the chief justice of the supreme court. And his name is Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. And he faces charges that are yet to be made formal and public. He faces those charges before something called the Supreme Judicial Council on April 3.
CALVIN SIMS. The issue of those abducted by the military regime seems to have risen to the forefront in Pakistan. How many people have been abducted under this military regime? And why is this starting to resonate as an issue?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Somewhere between 400 and 500 people have been picked up and taken away, which is why they’re called disappearances. And their families have been demanding answers of the government for the last several months. And this has really struck a chord with a lot of Pakistanis because this is seen as General Musharraf’s government doing the bidding of the United States. This is in part where his bind comes from.
Now, exactly why these people have been picked up, what charges, why they’re being held — all of this remains a mystery. And that’s precisely why the issue of the disappearances has struck such a chord. Now, it’s worth pointing out, Calvin, that this is really too early to call it something like a referendum on General Musharraf’s rule. Even his backers are saying that, O.K., well, he mishandled this situation. The judge should not have been suspended in this manner. The things that happened to the protesters; the attack on the protesters — the attack on TV stations — those things shouldn’t have happened. But he will come out of this.
Now, whether or not he comes out of it, even his supporters acknowledge he will be weakened. Because even if he finds the Supreme Judicial Council restoring the judge, it would go against his wishes. And if the Supreme Judicial Council actually suspends the judge, finds that there’s some merit to these charges against him, then that really calls into question the credibility of the whole judicial process. So, either way, General Musharraf’s hold on power, his credibility, is weakened and he will have to do something to repair it. What he will do exactly, whether he’ll strike a political deal with one of his opponents, is really the key question right now.
CALVIN SIMS. You talked about his opponents, the opposition there. Is there a viable opposition to Musharraf? In the past, he had banned the opposition parties from functioning. He now has allowed them to function. Yet their leaders are in exile. Is there a significant opposition force there?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Yes, absolutely. There are opposition parties. And even in the 2002 elections, which were considered flawed and less than credible, the Pakistan People’s Party — the P.P.P., led by Benazir Bhutto — captured the largest number of votes. And they are out in force. They are allowed to operate freely. However, the leaders of both parties — Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif — are in exile. And so that again calls into question his commitment to bringing back democracy to the country. When he will allow — if and when he will allow the two of them to return — whether he is going to be in a position to work out some kind of a compromise with either of them, we have yet to see.
CALVIN SIMS. How does General Musharraf justify these actions that he takes, which are clearly unconstitutional in many respects and are not sort of open and transparent like you would like an administration to be in a democracy? How does he justify them?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Look, his critics say that the way he suspended the chief justice was not constitutional; that the chief justice cannot be sacked until there are charges, until he is found guilty of a wrongdoing. General Musharraf, for his part, and his supporters, say that there are substantive charges against him. Some of those have been leaked in the press, by which side is unclear. But those charges are something along the lines of his pressing for favors for his son and various other misdeeds. Now, let’s see whether the judicial council actually finds him guilty of any of these — these things and whether Pakistanis, after that, think that those are serious enough charges on which to suspend the chief justice. General Musharraf has said, has insisted all along, that he has followed the law. He has also apologized for police breaking into a private television station and ransacking the station after they tried to broadcast some news of the protests. So he clearly realized quickly on that that was not proving to be very popular. And he went on the air and he apologized for police misconduct and promptly sacked 14 police officers. Now that hasn’t, of course, satisfied many of his critics because they say the police officers are just the fall guys for orders that came from — from somewhere else.
CALVIN SIMS. Does the average Pakistani like Musharraf? When you’re there on the ground, what do you hear from the average person on the street?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Well it’s awfully difficult to tell in a country where credible elections haven’t happened and public opinion polls are virtually nonexistent. There is a great level of frustration with the military rule of General Musharraf that has continued now for over seven years. And it could be — I mean there is one school of thought that says, You know, these things come in cycles. After a few years everyone gets tired of the same guy, and particularly a guy in uniform. There are questions about very basic things like price rise, the state of the economy, police reforms, corruption — kind of everyday issues of governance — that his regime is having to face. And without the legitimacy of an elected government behind him, those are harder things for General Musharraf to deal with. The U.S., which remains one of his most vital allies, has said that it is — it’s watching how this chief justice saga plays out. And on the issue of the uniform — in other words, whether he will continue to be army chief and president after this fall — the U.S. has repeatedly said that it expects General Musharraf to abide by the Constitution. But it has not gone any further than that. It has not said anything about wanting him to take off the uniform, wanting him to step down from the office of president or the office of army chief.
CALVIN SIMS. Musharraf has been lauded by the Bush administration as a key ally in the war on terror. What has he done to aid the U.S. in its crackdown on terrorism?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. The U.S. continues to — to say that he is a vital ally. His government, it has to be said, sends hundreds of Pakistani troops to the tribal areas on the Afghanistan border. And many of them pay dearly, with their lives, to help the U.S. in the war on terror. And the Bush administration remembers that and cites that repeatedly. Questions, however, are being raised, both in Pakistan as well as in Washington, about the extent to which an unelected military government can continue to do the job and at what point does that government become so unpopular that it becomes harder to do the necessary things to carry out the war on terror.
CALVIN SIMS. And General Musharraf has come under criticism in the U.S. by some circles for not doing enough to stop this resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda on the border with Afghanistan as well. Right?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Absolutely. I mean that question comes up again and again in Washington, that is he really doing enough? Is he able to do enough? And the American ambassador, the outgoing American ambassador in Islamabad said something very interesting a few, few weeks ago in which he said that General Musharraf’s commitment is not to be questioned. There’s no question about his commitment to fighting the U.S.-led war on terror. The question is his capacity to do so.
CALVIN SIMS. Musharraf obviously can’t survive in that capacity forever. He is under death threats. There’ve been several suicide attempts. What comes after Musharraf? And I guess I’m asking: If not Musharraf, is there someone to step in in this unique situation in Pakistan’s history that can still manage all of these different things that are — that are challenging Pakistan: the war on terror, internal squabbles? Who comes after Musharraf, if anyone?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. While there are many people in Washington who are asking the question: Who’s next after Musharraf? Who in Pakistan can do the job better? Particularly the American job: combing out, flushing out the extremist elements. Who can do that job better? The questions may well be asked, though, instead of one man, what kind of a Pakistani state, which includes the army, what kind of a Pakistani state can do the job better, both to deliver a stable Pakistan and a Pakistan that can help the U.S.-led war on terror.
CALVIN SIMS. Are Pakistanis looking to the United States to help play a role in the future of their country and perhaps in the transition of Musharraf to the next stage?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Well naturally. And General Musharraf’s critics in Pakistan think that the U.S. has done too much to prop him up and that with the U.S. support, the military has entrenched itself too much in Pakistani society. Now those are, of course, critics of General Musharraf. And his supporters will tell you that — that he has done, and his government and its army has done, things that were considered unthinkable in the past in order to — to do the right thing on the war against terror, including sending troops to the North-West Frontier Province and the border areas. And they will also repeatedly point out that General Musharraf remains under threat by radical Islamist forces in his country.
CALVIN SIMS. Somini, is it too early to say that this is the demise of General Musharraf? Or what do you think is on the horizon? What comes after this incident?
SOMINI SENGUPTA. It’s way too early to say that this is the end of General Musharraf. But certainly it’s very likely that the political dispensation of power in Pakistan could change. Will that include General Musharraf, probably in uniform? That’s — that’s likely. Will it also include some other players such as some of his political opponents? That’s the question before Pakistanis.
CALVIN SIMS. Somini Sengupta, Times South Asia bureau chief, thank you very much for speaking with us.
SOMINI SENGUPTA. Thanks.
CALVIN SIMS. And thanks for listening. I’m Calvin Sims of The New York Times. We’ll be back next week with another edition of World View.
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