Update: Thousands of Police Block Pakistan Rally
Anyhow, what were they saying?
"Musharraf sets election deadline; News fails to deter Pakistan's former prime minister from going ahead with banned rally" by Griff Witte and Pamela Constable/Washington Post November 9, 2007
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan -- As a possible clash loomed between security forces and supporters of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Thursday set a deadline of Feb. 15 for holding elections. But he did not give any indication of when he plans to end emergency rule, and a government spokesman said it might not happen before the vote. The announcement drew praise from the United States.
What kind of double game are we playing up there?
Bhutto, however, was not dissuaded from pushing ahead with plans for a major rally in this garrison city today in defiance of a ban on protests. Police have vowed to block the demonstration, and there were fears Thursday that the showdown could turn violent.
And CUI BONO, Mush?
In advance of the rally, authorities rounded up nearly 500 activists from Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party in overnight raids, the first time that her supporters have been targeted since the emergency was declared.
The Bush administration had called for the vote to move ahead and on Thursday applauded Musharraf's announcement.
White House press secretary Dana Perino:
"We would like to see him return to those elections as he said today he would do. The uniform is still an issue. The president called on him to take it off. He said, 'You can't be both the president and the head of the army.'"
Then resign, Bush!
Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim Khan said there was no schedule for lifting the emergency rules. Musharraf ostensibly imposed emergency rule to combat extremism. But critics say he has spent most of his time since then trying to consolidate power and neutralize the mainstream political opposition.
Bhutto: "State force is being used against civilians and not terrorists. Women are being dragged from their homes. We are returning to the dark days of martial law."
He's mistreating women?!!!
A Western diplomat said the West is encouraging Bhutto to work carefully in a volatile situation.
The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity: "We don't want to totally disrupt the entire apple cart. Bhutto must slowly ratchet up the tensions so that elections can take place. She has made a carefully calibrated strategy, and she's a very astute politician."
So we ARE PULLING the STRINGS on all this!
Bhutto's aides said that they expected serious clashes with police and other security forces today and that Bhutto might be prevented from reaching the rally.
Shah Mahmoud Qureshi, Bhutto's party chief for Punjab Province, at the rally site:
"There is a massive crackdown on party workers, even to the village level. They have torn down all our flags and locked the gates. They are doing everything in their power to scuttle the event, but we will make the attempt."
Khan, the deputy information minister, said he hoped Bhutto would cancel today's protest, given the ban on demonstrations:
"She's a responsible politician, so I don't think she'll create a law-and-order situation."
Elsewhere in Pakistan, members of a conservative religious party protested against emergency rule in the northwestern city of Peshawar. At least eight people were injured when police used baton charges and tear gas to disperse the crowd.
Bhutto's return from exile last month was greeted by jubilation among her supporters, but marred by an assassination attempt that killed 140 people. Authorities have said that she remains under threat and that her rally is likely to be targeted.
And CUI BONO?
Most of the anti-Musharraf protests have been attended by members of the secular, liberal opposition. But a leader of the religious party Jamaat-e-Islami said religious groups would also participate.
Maulana Siraj-ul-Haq, a party provincial chief: "It's time to rise up and remove this tyrant regime."
I guess that means the extremists won't be bombing the rally.
So CUI BONO, readers?
"Police Block Bhutto From Attending Rally" by JANE PERLEZ and DAVID ROHDE
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Friday, Nov. 9 — A day after President Bush called, Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Thursday that Pakistan’s parliamentary elections would be held before Feb. 15. But his security forces widened their crackdown and on Friday moved to prevent the leader of the main opposition party, Benazir Bhutto, from leaving her house to attend a mass protest planned for the afternoon.
Hours before the scheduled rally, though, lines of police officers turned her house in Islamabad into a fortress, placing concrete barriers and barbed wire at the entrance road and said she would not be permitted to attend. But her party said there was no formal order of detention. A trickle of party members was allowed into the house, but no one was allowed out.
In Rawalpindi, streets were filled with police officers carrying batons and shields, and dump trucks blocked roads, preventing access to the rally site, Liaquat Park, and shutting down the center of the city.
By Thursday evening, government security forces had closed the gates to Liaquat Park, named after the first Pakistani prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was assassinated.
Across Punjab Province on Thursday an estimated 500 workers of Ms. Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party were arrested in the government’s latest sweep of its opponents. Organizers of the rally, all of whom are in hiding from the authorities, said that they were prepared for violence with the police.
By Friday morning, party officials said, the number detained in the past three days had climbed to 5,000.
One cabinet minister suggested Thursday morning that elections might be delayed until the middle of next year. A Western diplomat said the minister was told that such a delay was “totally unacceptable.”
Underlying the United States’ concerns about emergency rule has been the effect on the stability of the Pakistani government and its increasingly faltering efforts in combating terrorism.
In the end, it appeared that Mr. Bush’s phone call made a difference. It illustrated that General Musharraf, who many analysts say is surrounded by obsequious aides, makes the big decisions himself, a Western diplomat said.
Yeah, Bush made a difference! Pffffffttttttt!!
Asked specifically if American officials were discussing with Pakistani military officials whether it was possible that General Musharraf might step down, the White House press secretary, Dana Perino, noted the extensive contacts between the American and Pakistani militaries:
“It would not be surprising to me if they’re in communication with one another, and they — anybody who has followed this issue — knows very well what President Bush’s position is on it.”
Really? The American people don't know because of all his lying!
So what is his position, you coke-snorting rectum hole?
Another official said that the administration was still hoping for a reconciliation between General Musharraf and Ms. Bhutto that could bring a degree of stability. That seemed to be complicated by the arrests of members of her party.
That was the plan, anyway. But we'll get rid of Mushy if we have to!
The official emphasized that elections alone were not enough; they had to be seen as free and fair. For the conduct of free and fair elections, an atmosphere allowing campaigning on the streets and on the airwaves is needed. Viable courts are necessary to hear electoral disputes.
Shit, what are we going to do in America in 2008?
Have unfair and unfree elections, it would seem.
General Musharraf’s most bitter foes, Pakistan’s lawyers, have said all week that even free and fair elections were not sufficient for them. Until now, the brunt of the resistance has been led almost single-handedly by lawyers in urban areas who have been rounded up and held in jails by the hundreds.
Yeah, not Bhutto's folks, and not the militants that are at war out west!
The leader of the lawyers’ movement, Aitzaz Ahsan, was allowed his first visit on Wednesday at the Adiali jail in Rawalpindi, where he has been held since Saturday night, as part of the government’s battle to neutralize its most effective opponents.
His sister-in-law, Nighat Asad, said she took Mr. Ahsan a blanket, a pillow and some medicine.
Another lawyer, Munir Malik, a former president of the Supreme Court bar association, who was ill, had been moved from the Rawalpindi jail to a more distant and tougher jail in Attock, near the North-West Frontier Province, Ms. Asad said.
Many other lawyers remained in jail in Pakistani cities, and the government seemed intent on meting out punishment to maintain a mood of intimidation."
Yeah, intimidate the lawyers! Sort of like here!
Except Bush just fires them!
And no one likes you any more, Mush. Leave, will ya?
"Anger at Decree Runs Deep in Pakistanis" by DAVID ROHDE
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Nov. 8 — Arrested by the hundreds, beaten by the police and tear- gassed, Pakistan’s lawyers and human rights advocates have led the protests against Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president. But the anger runs far deeper than Pakistan’s educated elite.
In interviews on the streets of Islamabad, the capital, and in this nearby garrison city over the last three days — rich and poor, professionals and laborers, members of the security forces and civilians — they overwhelmingly opposed the president’s emergency decree, rejecting it as a naked attempt by General Musharraf to bolster his fading powers.
Muhammad Saleem, 35, a phone shop clerk in a wealthy section of Islamabad, the capital:
“People are not fools. They do understand it’s not to stop militancy.”
Yeah, I know you Pakis are smart!
Uniformly, they said the decree had reduced General Musharraf’s already low popularity.
Jehangir Ahmed, a welder from Rawalpindi:
“If I stood for election here. I would win more seats than Musharraf.”
But while surely upset, few said they would join protests, like the one planned for Friday by the opposition party of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Many cited fears of being jailed indefinitely and leaving their families without a breadwinner for weeks, months or even years. Others said they might take part if the protests gathered steam and they felt more secure.
After eight years of military rule, the limbs of civil society that might organize people are atrophied. With their leaders in exile all that time, even the country’s main opposition parties are weak and divided, many said.
Instead, on people’s minds was the economy, already beset by spiraling prices. The mix of views outside the Lucky garage on the outskirts of Rawalpindi on Thursday night was typical.
Of seven young men — most covered in grease — almost all had a junior high education and made roughly $200 a month. Two had never attended school and were illiterate.
Six criticized General Musharraf’s declaration, but all cited a drop in business as the main reason. Police checkpoints and uncertainty had kept customers at home, they said.
Muhammad Imran, a 24-year-old with a fifth-grade education who managed the garage, said the emergency had worsened the most important reality of his life: poverty. He was unaware and unconcerned about democracy, but wanted more customers.
Mr. Imran, angrily: “We lose every day. People won’t come here.”
Of the 30 interviewed, only 2 supported the emergency declaration.
Ghulam Murtaza, 24, a tailor in Islamabad, was one as he ate lunch in his small shop:
“He’s done the right thing. There would have been a bomb blast.”
So it's 15-to-1 odds, and the NYT talks to the one. Pffffttttt!
Most supported a return to civilian government, saying that it would provide better services and that it was the best way to marginalize religious militants who had carried out a rising number of suicide bombings. Most said they had little interest in an Islamic government.
Yeah, yeah, we always here that, until you here they want it.
Sick of Zionist-sponsored lies!
But some, especially the poor, expressed deep cynicism about the prospect for change after decades of disappointment with political and military leaders. Civilian government was preferable, if for no other reason than exhaustion with military rule, which they said had not benefited them.
Muhammad Nawaz, 51, a street vendor:
“Whoever comes and rules, it won’t affect us. No party gives us anything. Nobody cares about poor people.”
That's probably the truest thing in this piece!
Since it gained independence from India 60 years ago, Pakistan’s powerful military has ruled the country for most of its history. Again and again, military coups interrupted civilian governments, widely viewed as ineffective and corrupt.
But after eight years of military rule by General Musharraf, and now de facto martial law, only one person preferred a military government to a civilian government. Nearly all said they felt it was time for Pakistan to try democracy again.
Yasir Mehmood, 30, the owner of a cellphone shop in Islamabad, called the failure of democracy the country’s “biggest tragedy.” While he agreed that civilian politicians were corrupt, he said that was preferable to martial law.
Mr. Mehmood: “They might be corrupt, but this is a worse situation.”
As an American, I can say that anything is preferable to martial law!
We don't want that, no we don't!
