President Pervaiz Musharraf met the self-exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in Abu Dhabi on Friday to shore up his fledgling regime by hammering out a deal on power-sharing. Both the leaders have so far avoided to deny or accept the summit meeting, though it has–and was–never a secret.
This meeting is going to have a far-reaching adverse effects on the future political despensation in Pakistan. It was a meeting of the like-minded who have the least regard for the sentiments of the common people. Benazir Bhutto, headiing a feudal but popular party of Pakistan, is in collusion with a feudal but unpopular entity i.e. Pakistan Army, to have her share in the cake.
The teaming up of Musharraf and Bhutto is not going to help democracy in Pakistan. It is also not going to stem the rising extremism in the country. Instead this alliance is bound to stoke the flames of militancy by alienating the common people who will easily rally behind the radical forces.
The Musharraf regime has already lost public support and any party that is going to hob-nob with it is bound to lose its vote as well.
Musharraf and Bhutto met in the backdrop of a popular movement that restored the Chief Justice of Pakistan who had been removed by the military ruler on flimsy charges to make his second term election from the present assemblies possible.
That movement has given the masses a new hope to take on the military head-on and restrict them to their barracks. Half way through its success, the Abu Dhabi meeting was meant to fizzle this movement out.
Whatever may be the results, one thing is sure that the new found hopes of democracy in Pakistan are about to shatter. When two feudal entities meet the common man loses for sure.
