The Supreme Court (SC) had given notice to former President Gen (Retd) Pervez Musharraf to explain his position in the “Judges Case” on July 29, 2009. Musharraf decided not to comply with the SC notice on the evasive legal technical grounds that it was not served on him.
I have known Pervez Musharraf for over 45 years now. As a cadet and young officer he was always someone to look upto. Fond of the good life and extremely adventurous, the Special Service Group (SSG) was the perfect unit for him to serve in. Blessed with a good intellect, he took to reading quite in depth as he rose in the ranks. When he got married he sobered from remaining only an all-action commando to becoming an excellent all-round soldier. Pervez Musharraf has always been a brave and courageous man, to the point of being reckless. If he had been in combat, one has no doubt he would have died with a hail of bullets in his chest emulating his good friend and Nishan-e-Haider winner Shabir Sharif Shaheed. Unfortunately he has never been in battle, all his good talk about being in combat is patently false and is not becoming of him. This was due to circumstances and certainly not because he was averse to combat. One can understand why as a soldier he is extremely sensitive on this issue. He has severe inferiority complex because of this, he made sure that only the odd Maj Gen with combat experience made it to three stars! Because of lack of planning and confusion a great part of the Army went up down the GT Road in both 1965 and 1971 without going into the action which most of them craved for, they are known as the “GT Road Warriors”. Pervez Musharraf never heard a shot being fired in anger till the assassination attempts on him as President. To be fair, by all accounts he conducted himself well in the face of that extreme danger.
Barely a month before the Nov 3, 2007 action, I had written on Oct 4, 2007 in the “Without the Uniform, Please”, to quote, “Eight years after military rule commenced without draconian measures and with the vociferous backing of all sections of society except for the handful they had removed, the regime is inexorably moving towards imposition of a harsh martial law, or at the least an emergency. While it is anyone’s right to disagree with the 6-3 verdict of the 9-member SC Bench, and vehemently perhaps, it is rank contempt to besmirch the integrity of the judges, the media is also guilty of this excess by allowing this to be aired, disparaging the SC amounts to encouraging anarchy”, unquote.
His Nov 3 action was not as President of Pakistan but as Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Pakistan Army. While it is true that he was placed in a corner because of the uniform issue and could claim extenuating circumstances because of judicial activism, I personally believe that his actions were purely self-serving and not in the interests of either the Army and/or the country. He must answer to the rule of law, should the one who set this country on the road to accountability by creating the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) try to evade accountability on evasive technical grounds? Is this the brave soldier I knew and served with?
There would have been a question of the neutrality of the SC Bench if Musharraf had been arraigned before them, on the grounds that all the judges on the Bench were affected by his Nov 3 action. So that their verdict would not be unilateral with his position being unheard, the SC was careful not to summon him but to give him notice, an opportunity to explain his own point of view. He should have done this not only on his own personal behalf but because of the uniform he once wore. Musharraf has done many good things as the ruler of Pakistan, does this not absolve him from being accountable for those of his actions that were not according to law? The Nov 3 action was executed as the COAS Pakistan Army, how in the world can an Army Chief send 60 judges packing? And not only packing, keep them virtually under house arrest for sometime? What about those who carried out his “unlawful commands”? This is a huge abomination on the principle of the rule of law, not only for his sake but the uniform he once wore, he needed to explain his point of view before getting the uniform condemned unheard. Every soldier must always be ready to stand up and face the consequences of his actions. It is most demeaning that he is now hiding behind legal technicalities.
Pervez Musharraf lived a very good life as President and enjoyed it in all senses of the word to the hilt, it is in his interest that the Ahsanullah-kind of his nocturnal activities is not publicly aired. He owes it to his family to spare them being subjected to any such expose. Part and parcel of his shenanigans, and benefitting greatly by it, his friends have a vested interest to cover their own misdeeds and the benevolence they enjoyed because of Musharraf’s rather monarchial traits as an absolute ruler. Not that things are any different in a democracy without accountability, that in fact can be worse than any dictatorship. One tends to get away in a farcical democracy under the guise of “the peoples will”!
It would have been far better for Pervez Musharraf to stop giving interviews and give a comprehensive statement before the SC through his legal Counselors. He must remember the Gen Macarthur saying, “old soldiers never die, they simply fade away”. One can fade away in self-imposed exile London any day!
Courtesy: The News
