Pakistan's Moment of Truth
Time, Thursday, May. 17, 2007
By Mohsin Hamid
Excerpts:
For many Pakistanis, Chaudhry's suspension is a stark reminder of the venal, institution-destroying politics that Musharraf claimed his 1999 coup was meant to correct. Small protests in support of Chaudhry, initially by the Bar Association, were brutally suppressed by the security forces, provoking even wider outrage. News coverage was throttled as well, with local television stations not just intimidated by regulators but physically attacked by armed police officers, in a dramatic reversal of the media freedom that many liberal Pakistanis had previously hailed as one of Musharraf's most important achievements in power.
...As a result, Pakistan—a frontline state in the war on terror whose stability is essential if that war is to be prosecuted with any success—is at an inflection point. An increasingly powerful opposition to Musharraf's rule has coalesced around the still-rumbling issue of the Chief Justice's suspension. It includes not just the activists of mainstream political parties such as former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party but also religious conservatives tired of being made into the scapegoats for the country's problems and progressive liberals alarmed by the increasingly dictatorial tendencies of the Musharraf regime. This opposition remains disunited, but it seems to represent a growing majority of the country's population.
... If Musharraf is to have a positive role in the future of the country, he must act soon to broker a compromise with his opponents. Pakistan, a torn nation sorely in need of hope and healing, deserves nothing less.
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