Re: General Satti appointed new CGS
Cowasjee at his usual best, 17 Oct 1999;
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/991017.htm
The coup that failed**
By Ardeshir Cowasjee
WE start with the Constitution promulgated by Bhutto on August 14, 1973, which had a life of four hours within which its promulgator effectively amended it by suspending fundamental rights. He was later to reamend it seven times, each amendment aimed at increasing his power and perpetuating his rule. But he always feared the army.
He abducted and sacked army chief Gul Hasan and appointed a nonentity, Tikka Khan. When his term expired he went to the fifth down the line, a man he mistakenly took to be a perfect Uriah Heep, one Zia-ul-Haq.
On July 5, 1977, Zia-ul-Haq deposed Bhutto and suspended the Constitution. He revived it in 1985 and amended it for the eighth time to suit his particular purpose. After he fell from the skies in 1988, it was trumpeted that ‘democracy’ had been ‘reborn’ when Benazir Bhutto was installed as head of government after emerging victorious in the elections.
She robbed freely, caring a damn when caught with her fingers deep in the till. She was dismissed and replaced with our second democrat, Nawaz Sharif, who robbed until he was dismissed and replaced with Benazir who robbed again, was again dismissed, and again replaced with Nawaz, who went dangerously berserk and was again dismissed.
One of the referee ‘caretakers’ in between the coming and going was the US-blessed Moeen Qureshi who, by the end of his three-month term, had transformed himself into a Pakistani democratic politician. He indulged in blatant nepotism that led to robbery. One instance : knowing the reputation of M. B. Abbasi and his ability to rob and destroy he appointed him head of the then solvent financial institution NDFC, acting deliberately against the advice of his finance minister, Syed Babar Ali. This was done to please Benazir Bhutto who was due to be enthroned for her second reign upon Qureshi’s departure from the scene.
To knowingly appoint a renowned fiddler of finances to head a financial institution of the people is a crime. Amongst the myriad nepotic loans given by Abbasi was one of over Rs.100 million to Moeen Qureshi’s brother Bilal, who defaulted.
The last referee was Farooq Leghari, who brought us to where we are today. Leghari bears sole responsibility for the disasters of the past two and a half years. Despite public pressure and international advice to delay elections and initiate a process of accountability he selfishly refused to do so. He chose instead to instal a known and proven band of exchequer robbers, headed by Nawaz Sharif, absent from whose list of priorities was the welfare of the nation.
Nawaz took no chances. He rushed through the 13th and 14th constitutional amendments - the first denuding the president of power and transferring it to himself, including the hiring and firing of our military chiefs, and the second stifling all parliamentary dissent. He took on the judiciary, ably helped by former Supreme Court judge and sitting Senator, Rafiq Tarar. They and their men masterminded the storming of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and the subsequent sacking of a Chief Justice of Pakistan who might have found Nawaz Sharif guilty in one of the 150 cases pending against him and thus disqualified him from politics. The majority of the judges of the Supreme Court cooperated. Unluckily for them, Nawaz had a ‘book’ on each judge, recording their good and not so good deeds. These ‘books’ now lie in the safe custody of his successors.
The judiciary of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan lies demoralized and helpless to the extent that a writ petition was recently admitted seeking the unseating of a good High Court judge on the ground that he is a non-Muslim. This, despite the fact that out of three of the only unbending upright judges of Pakistan deserving of honour without reservation, two were non-Muslims.
On October 13, whilst pleading a case before Supreme Court Justices Khalilur Rahman, Munir Shaikh and Wajihuddin Ahmad, Barrister Hafiz Pirzada boldly revived the disgrace of November 1997. He reminded them that on the day the men who stormed their court were acquitted by their court and then garlanded outside their court by their fellow members of the then ruling party, he had warned them that they would soon hear the march of jackboots and see the flash of bayonets.
Like his predecessors, Zulfikar and Benazir, Nawaz feared the army. He was unable to get along with his army chiefs, starting with Aslam Beg, then Asif Nawaz, and on to Waheed Kakar who sent him home in 1993. Returning, he had to contend with Jehangir Karamat who told the country what was wrong with it and its leaders. For that he was sacked. Nawaz, like Zulfikar, went down the line and chose the third in seniority, a man he took to be weak as he had no political base. As usual, a bad judge of character, Nawaz had blundered. General Pervez Musharraf is a soldier’s soldier, strong of mind. Within a year a situation arose in which it was either a case of Nawaz getting rid of Musharraf or vice versa.
**So Nawaz planned a coup. On October 11, to maintain secrecy and cover their tracks, he and his co-conspirators - Inter Services Intelligence maestro Lt-General Ziauddin, Supreme Court stormer Mushtaq Tahirkheli, information wizard Mushahid Hussain, PTV boss Parvez Rashid, won-over Journalist-turned speech writer Nazir Naji - flew to Abu Dhabi to finalize the coup programme. Musharraf was to be dismissed whilst on his way back to Pakistan after an official visit to Sri Lanka, and Ziauddin installed in his seat. *Did this hamhanded lot, including one serving Lt- General, not know how the army operates, that there is a minute to minute updated contingency plan to deal with all types of emergency? 10th Corp’s 111 Brigade at GHQ Rawalpindi remains on red alert at all times, wherever be the COAS, to ensure that the army can take full control of the country within an hour. *
On October 12, when General Musharraf took off for his 200-minute flight to Karachi the prime minister issued a notification dismissing him and ordered Ziauddin to get himself to GHQ and assume command. When Ziauddin arrived, the CGS informed him that according to army tradition, he would have to await the arrival of General Musharraf before command could be handed over. Ziauddin rushed to the PM’s house in Islamabad for help and guidance.
Then came the masterstroke. The nervous conspirators instructed Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, head of our national airline, to order those responsible to ensure that the flight carrying Musharraf would not land at Karachi. Where was it to land? Anywhere out of Pakistan. When the captain of the aircraft informed the control tower that he did not have enough fuel to fly out, he was told to land at Nawabshah. At Karachi, Nawaz’s heavy, IGP Sindh Rana Maqbool Ahmad, sitting with the PM’s Adviser on Sindh Affairs Ghous Ali Shah, bypassing the Nawabshah DC, ordered SSP Ahsanullah Gondal to round up the Nawabshah police force and APCs, rush to the airport, arrest General Musharraf when his plane landed, escort him to a secluded place, and hold him there until he and Ghous arrived by helicopter.
Meanwhile, the army took over Karachi airport and ordered traffic control to bring in the aircraft, which by then was left with fuel for seven minutes of flight. End of conspiracy, end of coup. General Musharraf, COAS and CJCSC, landed, sacked Nawaz, and assumed control of the country.
On October 13, legal pastmaster Sharifuddin Pirzada, closely followed by former attorney-general Aziz Munshi, flew to Islamabad. That night a Provisional Constitution Order was issued, together with a continuance of the state of emergency proclaimed on May 28, 1998. General Musharraf declared himself chief executive of the Republic of Pakistan.
The general is a good Muslim, as opposed to being a fundamentally inclined fanatic. He is a man of liberal thought, outward-looking, and in full command of what and who he commands. He is a man who opposes the belief that the preservation or gaining of any territory is worth the nuclear destruction of even one city. We and the world should now feel safer knowing the nuclear button is in his hands rather than in those of unpredictable, untrustworthy, unthinking politicians such as ‘democrats’ Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.
The international leaders and commentators who sit thousands of miles away from this blighted country and automatically unthinkingly call for the ‘restoration of democracy’ are blind to the fact that democracy was never there to be restored. To those who demand that the country be ruled according to the Constitution, I ask to which constitution they refer? The one we have at present, amended and reamended into mutilation by successive politicians to be used by the few to the detriment of the many?
**
