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| India-Pakistan |
| Kiyani rules Pakistan |
| 2008-06-12 |
| By G Parthasarathy A defiant President Pervez Musharraf frontally took on his critics in a wide-ranging Press conference on May 7, rejecting widespread public demand for an inquiry on the Kargil fiasco, defending his policies and his handling of the judiciary and vowing that he would not yield to demands that he should quit. But the embattled President knows that he has reached the twilight of his controversial career and that it is only a question of time before he, like the proverbial "Lone Ranger", would have to "ride into the sunset". The squabbling politicians now ruling Pakistan are already daggers drawn on how to deal with Gen Musharraf, but are not able to decide how they can get rid of him, while simultaneously protecting their own personal interests and political turf. Even as the political soap opera between Gen Musharraf and the politicians is played out, it is apparent that real power behind the scenes is wielded by the country's Army chief, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani, with the Army having been proclaimed as the protector of Pakistan's "ideological frontiers" by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. Gen Kiyani, who recently had three hour long midnight meeting with the besieged Gen Musharraf, is consolidating his position as the country's ultimate arbiter. Even supporters of Mr Nawaz Sharif acknowledge that while Gen Kiyani will not interfere in the President being eased out in a constitutional and graceful manner by parliamentary action, the Army will not countenance its former chief being humiliated. Mr Sharif cannot, after all, forget that when the personal vendetta between him and the then crusty old President Ghulam Ishaq Khan got out of hand, the then Army chief, Gen Abdul Waheed Kakar, forced both the President and the Prime Minister to resign on July 18, 1993. |
| Posted by:john frum |