ISLAMABAD - Pakistan’s military ruler President Pervez Musharraf is battling serious dissent within his own party, weakening a crucial cornerstone of the US-led “war on terror,” analysts and party officials say.The man who survived at least two Al Qaeda assassination attempts stirred up a hornet’s nest when he suspended the country’s top judge, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, on March 9. Opponents say he wanted to intimidate the judiciary before seeking re-election in uniform from the outgoing parliament — despite the fact that the constitution says he should quit as army chief by the end of 2007.
After trying to present a united front in the face of nationwide protests, newspapers reported this week that Musharraf had blasted members of his ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q). “I bluntly say you always leave me alone in times of trial and tribulation,” The News, a respected daily, quoted a “shaken” Musharraf as telling the members on Wednesday.
| Was he sweating when he said that? |
But hours after he spoke, fresh divisions emerged when Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz abruptly suspended tough curbs on the media that Musharraf himself had introduced three days earlier.
Part of the problem, analysts say, lies in the ragtag origins of the PML-Q, which is named after PakistanÂ’s founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah. To back him in 2002 elections, Musharraf gathered disaffected members from the Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif, the premier he overthrew in a 1999 coup, and the Pakistan PeopleÂ’s Party of ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
But the hybrid party is largely conservative and has failed to support some of Musharraf’s measures to tackle sexism and religious extremism. It now faces trouble in a general election expected late this year. “The president is solely responsible for destroying the party. He never considered it important to seek its opinion,” Kabir Ali Wasti, one of several PML-Q vice-presidents, told AFP.
| Dictators usually don't consult widely. |
Musharraf’s strongest backing has come from his allies in Karachi, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement. However, they have been accused of involvement in violence there on May 12 that claimed more than 40 lives when Chaudhry tried to speak in the city. “I have told the president there is no consultative process in the party. We need to regroup to survive,” said Farooq Amjad Mir, a PML-Q legislator from the eastern city of Lahore. “Even on the judicial issue there was no parliamentary meeting called to work out a strategy in the face of the opposition and media onslaught.”