President Pervez Musharraf is having a great time these days, addressing rally after rally across Pakistan. For the past one month, he has been telling the public (hopefully not as gullible as he thinks they are) about his great achievements as a dictator (who is trying to be a democrat).

He parrots the remarkable milestones in Pakistan's progress as a liberal, democratic state starting from the day he took over from Nawaz Sharif. After extolling his own virtues, he spews fire on Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, calling them anti-national, warning the public of their reign of corruption. At the end of every speech, every rally, he only exhorts the people to vote him. I am the best, he says. So choose the best.

What he will never tell the public is this. His regime has throttled whatever freedom of speech there was in Pakistan. Not that there was much of it any way in a nation-state that has been ruled mostly by the Generals since its birth. But there was a semblance of democracy earlier. Prime Ministers were elected. And there were all the pillars of democracy, at least in name. The judiciary, the bureaucracy, the legislature and the fourth Estate functioned, more or less, despite a tight leash. Musharraf swept aside all these notions in two years.

According to the latest Amnesty International report on Pakistan, "Pervez Musharraf took steps that further consolidated the army's authority and all but ensured that any future government would operate under military tutelage''. Musharraf had plenty of time to engineer his moves. The world attention was on the Taliban and the US-led campaign on its strongholds. Musharraf made the right noises at the right places while cleverly erecting a democratic structure that was neither democratic nor dictatorial. He created a controlled democracy-controlled by himself and his coterie of retired and serving Brigadiers and Generals.

He used the US presence in the region to neutralise his opponents in the Army and clamp a tight lid on the mullahs who threatened to overthrow him. Those were positive steps as far as the world was concerned. But for Musharraf, it offered him a convenient smokescreen to keep his political opponents under tight leash. He banned rallies and threw several thousand political party members into prison on the flimsiest of pretexts. He gagged the media, and those who dared to mouth any opposition to him and his plans were either thrashed or thrown out. Even the editor of The News International had to bear the brunt of his wrath when the newspaper ran stories linking terror groups with the Army and ISI.

One of his key instruments of oppression was the accountability law and the National Accountability Bureau that was freely and wantonly used to browbeat political leaders into submission. Those who remained adamant were framed under various charges of corruption. His machination was his decision to fire at his political opponents from the shoulders of the judiciary. Recently, the Lahore High Court ordered an independent inquiry into the allegedly unaccounted properties and wealth of several top politicians of the country, including Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan and his wife Jemima Khan. No wonder, Imran Khan capitulated within hours and declared his loyalty towards the General.

The Amnesty report cites the second most serious development as "the militarisation of civilian institutions''. At the beginning of the year, it says, about 175 serving and retired military officers held high-level civilian posts. In addition, Musharraf had established a countrywide network of monitoring teams comprising army personnel, Directorate of Military Intelligence personnel, and members of the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency's field units to keep a watch on the civilian bureaucracy. Today, President Musharraf is in full control and no one will dare vote against him.

Dailypioneer.com 30.4.02