As Pervez Musharraf yearns to return home ; Pakistan Taliban will send him to

mangaloretoday.com/NDTV

ISLAMABAD, March 23 — If former president Pervez Musharraf makes good on his vow to return to Pakistan to run in historic parliamentary elections after five years of self-exile, he risks at least three undesired consequences: Jail, Assassination — or Public indifference.

 

Musharraf, who faces several arrest warrants in legal proceedings related to his nine-year autocratic rule, has said he is willing to risk everything to compete in a race that is expected to end in Pakistan’s first democratic transfer of power in its 65-year history.

Some analysts predict his return could stoke a potentially destabilizing confrontation between the judiciary and the military if a court orders his arrest. The betting is that the army that he served in for more than 40 years would defend him against going to jail, even though his popularity among the military is no longer strong.

On the other hand Pakistan Taliban on Saturday threatened to assassinate former president Pervez Musharraf when he returns home to Pakistan. It said its suicide bombers and snipers will send Musharraf to "hell" if he comes back.

Musharraf, who has been living in London and Dubai since he left Pakistan in early 2009, travelled to Saudi Arabia on Friday for what his party said was a "one-day visit to perform Umrah". An unnamed delegate travelling with Musharraf was quoted by The News daily as saying that Saudi officials had told Musharraf that he should consider postponing his return to Pakistan.

Musharraf had recently announced that he intended to fly into Karachi on March 24. "The Saudis are concerned that Musharraf will be putting himself in the way of danger if he returns to Pakistan as planned. The situation in Pakistan, especially in the coming days, is going to be completely hostile to him," the delegate was quoted as saying.

Saudi officials held meetings with him in Dubai and whispered to him that the Kingdom thought that Musharraf should review his plan and not fall to emotional tinge," the delegate said. He also added that Saudi officials, including intelligence agents, had held meetings with Musharraf. The same officials were involved in negotiations that saw the former premier Nawaz Sharif leaving Pakistan for Saudi Arabia after Musharraf took over in a bloodless coup in 1999.

Senior officials of Musharraf’s All Pakistan Muslim League party from the US and Europe have accompanied the former dictator to Saudi Arabia. Analysts believe that Musharraf’s party will lose support and perform poorly in the polls to be held on May 11 if he is unable to return to Pakistan on Sunday.

Then again, Musharraf may receive a collective yawn from everyone except the fevered media if, as promised, he lands Sunday in Karachi on an Emirates Airlines flight from Dubai, his home in exile. Reporters scrambled to reserve seats on the plane, even though the retired general has scrubbed previous avowed returns.

His boosters contend that the public yearns for the stability and better economic times often associated with the Musharraf era, which ended in 2008, because they’ve been hammered by five years of inflation, joblessness and worsening energy shortages under the ruling Pakistan People’s Party.

 

 “I’m going back to set the country right, if given the chance,” he said in an interview with the France 24 television network earlier this month. Asked whether he would settle for a seat in parliament, he said firmly, “No, no, no . . . I cannot lower my stature.”

“The parties would hate to see Pervez Musharraf come back and for the people to recall what a tremendous government he had run,” said retired Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, who headed the military’s public relations wing under Musharraf.
“Everyone had a job. Everyone seemed to be making money and prospering,” Qureshi said.

Others call that view overly rosy and say Musharraf is taking undeserved credit for a global swell of prosperity that lifted all economic boats. And, say critics, any good Musharraf did was offset by a far darker legacy that included suspending the constitution, arresting political foes and ousting the Supreme Court in an effort to remain in power.

He faced certain impeachment before he stepped down in August 2008. And though his backers argue today that his one-man rule was essentially democratic, that doesn’t quite wash. After all, it started when he seized power from then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who had been duly elected.

A PML leader Asif Shahzad Chaudhry, currently in Dubai, said Musharraf has every intention to go back to Pakistan irrespective of the repercussions and there would be no "looking back". "Tickets have already been booked. From the UK, Europe and US, nearly 150 people have their tickets booked. Nearly 100 journalists will also accompany us," Chaudhry said.