Turmoil
Prime Minister Sharif was gaining disapproval on many fronts, for he was perceived to be power hungry and possibly corrupt. He had forced out the chief justice of the supreme court and the army chief soon after the eighth amendment was revised, he was cracking down on the press that did not support him and his family’s firm, Ittefaq Industries, was doing abnormally well in times of economic slowdown, which led to suspicions of corruption. The army chief, Jehangir Karamat was among the many who were worried about Sharif’s mounting power, he demanded that the army be included in the country’s decision-making process in attempt to balance the civil government. Two days later he resigned putting General Pervez Musharraf in his position. Musharraf had been one of the principal strategists in the Kashmiri crisis with India. He soon suspected that he did not have the political backing of the civil government in his aggressive quest in Kashmir. The combination of Shariff’s reluctance in the Kashmiri opposition, mounting factional disputes, terrorism all provided Musharraf with the justification to lead a coup to overthrow the civil government. On October 12th, 1999 he successfully ousted Sharif and the Muslim League on the grounds that he was maintaining law and order while strengthening the institution of governance.
The Pakistani people thought that this may be on a temporary basis and once things had stabilized, Musharraf would call for new elections of the National Assembly. But Musharraf has refused to reinstate the National Assembly via elections until October 2002, a deadline set by the Supreme Court. In July of 2001 Musharraf declared himself president before meeting with the Indian prime minister to legitimize his authority within the Pakistani government. He has since recalled all regional militant Islamic factions through out Pakistan and encouraged them to return their weapons to the central government. He has been unwavering on Pakistan’s position on Kashmir, which resulted in shortening talks with India. He is now cooperating with the American government and western world in the coalition against terrorism, which puts him in an awkward position with his Afghanistan neighbors and the fractious groups within Pakistan who sympathize with the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden on an ethnic, ideological and political level.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah had always envisioned a democratic Pakistan and many of his successors have struggle towards this goal, but not more than maintaining their own platforms of power. It is ironic that such political instability plagues a country whose number one objective of its leaders is to secure their own power. Maybe it is time for a new equation. The actions of both civil and military leaders have exhaustively tried the Pakistani people and their struggle as a nation. Pakistan faces the unenviable task of setting government priorities in accordance with the needs of its diverse and unevenly developed constituent units. Regardless of the form of government–civilian or military, Islamic or secular–solutions of the problem of mass illiteracy and economic inequities on the one hand, and the imperatives of national integration and national security will also determine the degree of political stability, or instability, that Pakistan faces in the decades ahead. But the people and the nation persevere offering the world great cultural, religious, and intellectual traditions.
