Divided We Stand
Events over the past week or so are witness to why the uniform is so important to the President, the ruling PML is a “democratic” house of cards held together by the authority of Pervez Musharraf as the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Pakistan Army. While not less than 70% of the PML (and allied) parliamentarians have individual political clout in their own constituencies and thus legitimacy on their own steam, almost 30% would never have made it into the Assembles had it not been for those in charge of political manipulations in the ISI and MI, directly under the direction of the COAS. An alliance was cobbled together in 2002 to give legitimacy to our democratic pretensions, if the system has survived until now it is only because the ISI and MI remain Swords of Damocles, without discounting of course the personality of the President as COAS. Seeing the PML edifice in danger, Musharraf called all the faction heads to an enlarged meeting of the PML’s heads on Monday May 16, 2005, ostensibly to discuss the present economic and geo-political situation, mainly to give the “loyal” Parliamentarians a pep talk and paper over the chinks and cracks appearing in the body armour of Pakistan’s ruling party.
