Musharraf- Pakistan's democracy needs work

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Friday night defended proposed constitutional amendments that would greatly enhance his powers and enshrine the army's role in government, saying that civilian democratic rule here has been a sham.

In a nationally televised address, Musharraf insisted that he is committed to restoring democratic rule, as he pledged to do after deposing then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup in October 1999.

But Musharraf, the country's third military leader since its founding in 1947, also suggested that democracy as conventionally practiced in Pakistan needs a thorough overhaul.

"There has never been true democracy in Pakistan," said the general, who wore his army uniform. "If there had been true democracy, I would not have been before you today." Musharraf's comments were aimed at justifying proposed constitutional amendments that have triggered a tidal wave of criticism in Pakistan, where many people had welcomed the former commando as a savior after years of corrupt and incompetent civilian rule.

Musharraf is coming under fire not just from Islamic militant groups and their political allies but from middle-class Pakistanis.

Musharraf's growing political troubles pose a potentially serious problem for the Bush administration, which has embraced him as a secular-minded liberal and an ally in the war on terrorism.

The proposed amendments would, among other things, grant him new authority to name the country's prime minister and dismiss its parliament while formalizing the army's governing role as part of a new national security council.

Other proposals would bar the leaders of Pakistan's two main political parties - former prime ministers Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, both of whom are in exile - from running for office and require college degrees of parliamentary candidates.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court - whose members have signed an oath of loyalty to Musharraf as a condition of keeping their jobs - upheld the graduation requirement. The order disqualified, in a single stroke, more than 98 percent of Pakistan's 144 million citizens. More than half the politicians who served in the last parliament, which Musharraf dismissed when he seized power, would be prevented from holding office again.

The order came a day after Musharraf announced that elections for the lower house of parliament, or National Assembly, and four provincial assemblies would be held on Oct. 10, consistent with his pledge to restore democracy within three years of seizing power.

"What did the farcical democracy of the past 11 years give the nation?" Musharraf asked Friday night. "Poor governance, malfunctioning, institutional collapse and erosion of democratic values." As a consequence, he added, "the need of the hour is not mere revival of democracy but the establishment of a sustainable democracy." Before the referendum and amendment proposals, many Pakistanis had held out hope that Musharraf would prove a transitional figure, gracefully stepping aside - or perhaps remaining in office with reduced powers - after restoring democracy and equilibrium to the nation's tortured politics. Few would argue that now.

"Until six months ago, his stock was reasonably high," said Najam Sethi, editor of the Friday Times in Lahore. "There was no way Musharraf was going to go home - that we knew - but we thought the new political system that came into being would probably be more or less like the old one and there would be a judicious balance of power. Now everyone's wiser." The anger is not just directed at Musharraf. Many Pakistanis also blame Washington for what they regard as the erosion of democracy, noting that the Bush administration has yet to offer any public criticisms of the referendum or proposed amendments.

Samina Ahmed, a political scientist who heads the Pakistan office of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based non-profit group that specializes in conflict resolution, calls the administration's approach shortsighted. "If there aren't democratic elections," she said, "you'll have a lot more Islamic extremists coming out of a distorted political system to threaten American interests."