 In a scathing political editorial, the Washington Post on Friday criticised President George Bush for continuing to "lionise" Gen. Pervez Musharraf while shutting his eyes to his authoritarian rule. The Post wrote that with the announcement that he would not be stepping down as chief of the Pakistan army, "President Pervez Musharraf will break yet another of the promises he has made to his country and the world since seizing power in a 1999 military coup against an elected government.' The newspaper recalled that a year ago, in exchange for parliamentary support for a package of laws increasing his powers as President, extending his rule through 2007 and curtailing elected government through the creation of a military-dominated national security council, Gen. Musharraf had pledged to resign from his post as Army chief of staff by Dec. 31.
| That's all very nice, but it's not the libertarians and the secularists who're pushing for Perv to fall so much as the authoritarian religious parties — you know, the guys who say that democracy is a Jewish plot and that people should be ruled by holy men, with turbans and automatic weapons. Why do you think they have hissy fits over the idea of a secular state? So it boils down to a Devil-Deep Blue Sea sort of thing, with Perv and his oligarchs holding a bare edge of power over Qazi and his holy men, doesn't it? |
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