Re: Lotay Wanted
You are giving Mush too much credit here. He removed his uniform under pressure from the US. Then was sucked into believing by the Americans that he could extend his kursi with the help of illegal NRO. That was nothing but greed. Do you seriously think that BB (if elected PM) w'd have tolerated him as President for 5 years!!
Although I accept that he ruled ok from 1999-2002, his downfall pretty much started in 2003 when he aligned himself with one of the most corrupt people in politics, the Chaudharies. It beggars belief that he could not find more honest people in Pakistan than these loan defaulters
Brother, my opinion is different than yours. We can give our opinion and defend it with logical arguments but if we cannot convince each other, than better to leave things there. Anyhow, my opinion and reasons behind my opinion are:
No pressure in the world could have made Musharraf to take off uniform if he wanted to keep it. I believe Musharraf took off uniform because he wanted to give democracy a chance.
I also do not think that Musharraf thought NRO would save his kursi. If Musharraf wanted to save his kursi than Musharraf needed to keep his uniform, keep both thugs out of Pakistan, and make PMLQ win election, by hook or crook. Actually, I cannot see any logical reason to believe NRO and promoting PPP (both Musharraf was doing in 2007) could have saved Musharraf kursi, rather both (NRO and PPP) were obvious threat to his Kursi, especially NRO.
Dictators use corruption and criminal cases on politicians to blackmail and intimidate politicians but this dictator (Musharraf) by bringing NRO was withdrawing all cases and strengthening politicians. Musharraf did not needed PPP or PMLN to get strengthen in Pakistan, rather should have kept them weak by keeping their corrupt leaders out of Pakistan or face court cases if they return (that mean, no NRO). To me (IMO)... by bringing NRO, Musharraf took illogical and self-destructive step that has one explanation and that is to give democracy a chance at his own expense.
I also believe that along with giving democracy a chance, another reason to bring NRO and PPP in power was that, Musharraf might be thinking that PPP would be able to fight terrorism much better than PMLQ and thus for the sake of Pakistan he has to bring PPP into power, so NRO.
As for Caudharies, they maybe corrupt but certainly they are nowhere near in comparison to Nawaz and BB. Further, whatever the level of corruption we can think of for politicians who joined Musharraf and PMLQ, Pakistan kept growing and progressing throughout until 2008 and quite rapidly too. So, for me their corruptions however undesirable were still within a limit.
[PS: If you have reasons to believe that NRO was introduced to save Musharraf kursi then please give those reasons along with logical argument how that could be possible ... in what way NRO was suppose to benefit Musharraf ... especially when at the time Musharraf was still in command, held Army chief post and presidential post, had his own handpicked Prime Minister and party he formed was the largest party in assembly ruling the country.]