{"id":2666,"date":"2007-11-05T09:48:06","date_gmt":"2007-11-05T16:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2007\/11\/05\/musharraf\/"},"modified":"2007-11-05T09:48:06","modified_gmt":"2007-11-05T16:48:06","slug":"musharraf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2007\/11\/05\/musharraf\/","title":{"rendered":"Musharraf"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. “is deeply disturbed by the proclamation of emergency,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. “We cannot support emergency rule or the extreme measures taken during the emergency. Such actions are not in Pakistan’s best interests and damage the progress Pakistan has made on its path to democracy.” <\/em><\/p>\n

This is one of those statements, and I believe I heard Condelleza Rice made similar statements, which elicits the simple question: “What progress on what path to what democracy are you talking about?”<\/p>\n

Well, here is the rationalization of the Pakistani Democracy Project, as put forward by the ruler since that military coup in … 1998? … Musharraf,<\/p>\n

Musharraf, however, urged the global community to “understand the ground realities in Pakistan and the decision taken to stabilise the situation in the country”. <\/font><\/em><\/p>\n

He assured the diplomats that efforts were being made in a phased manner to move towards complete democracy since 1999. In the first phase of this process during 1999-2002, he was in full control of the government. <\/font><\/em><\/p>\n

This was followed by the second phase during 2002-07 when an elected parliament functioned along with provincial assemblies and local governments and his role was confined to “advising the government on various issues of national importance”, Musharraf said. <\/font><\/em><\/p>\n

He also referred to the role of the media, saying that in some cases it “seemed to be helping the cause of extremists and terrorists by showing the gory scenes of suicide bombings”, which “encouraged these elements to carry on with their heinous acts”. <\/font><\/em><\/p>\n

Musharraf also said difficult decisions had to be taken in the national interest for “ensuring effective governance, maintaining writ of the government, law and order, security in the country and averting a decline in economic growth”.<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

I think I have always said that Pakistan was de rigouer necessary in keeping track of or an eye on and understand some political undercurrents out of, for us lay-people, because it was liable to explode.\u00c2\u00a0 But after that it becomes a strange example of national impotence.\u00c2\u00a0 For instance, I knew how certain rising tensions regarding North Korea would resolve itself; Pakistan just shows up as a black box and some unsolvable riddle.\u00c2\u00a0 (Immediate interests in terms of Americans shows up with Jon Stewart’s odd interview question to Musharraf: “Where’s Osama Bin Laden?<\/em>“, but to expand some things out of our narrow purview — you know the Indian’s interests<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. “is deeply disturbed by the proclamation of emergency,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. “We cannot support emergency rule or the extreme measures taken during the emergency. Such actions are not in Pakistan’s best interests and damage the progress Pakistan has made on its path to democracy.” This is one of those statements, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}