Dancing after Pappu

So it’s a case of Pappu can’t dance. Or is it? Many, including General Musharraf, believe he has done all he could for his country, short of dancing to its unruly political tunes. At least, that was the impression the general gave in his long resignation speech yesterday as he enumerated his many achievements over the past eight years and ten months in power and implied that his country and its people were perhaps not worthy of him, after all.

It took Pakistan’s top commando nearly nine years to realise that he had overstayed his welcome. That’s food for thought in a country that has known little political stability since its birth. By finally resigning, even if reluctantly, Musharraf may only have saved Pakistan from further instability in the short run; that is, if predictions can be made on the basis of history.

An ungainly contrast was manifest in the fallen general’s flight from the presidency yesterday when compared to October 12, 1999, when his faithful lieutenants had staged a coup at his behest while he hung in the air aboard a homebound plane from Sri Lanka. This time round, Musharraf was in the line of fire without his armour. The generals relaxed while a civilian president and an elected parliament fought their battle of wills. Democracy is given a chance after a military intervention failed to deliver. Yet again. God bless Pakistan.

Musharraf’s reign has been a reign of error, one after another. It started with high drama in the skies and ended with a reluctant, dragging drop scene under the media’s glare. He was received surprisingly well by the people initially; he could have banished Sharif, as he did, held elections and gone back to the barracks honourably. Then, over eight years later, he had another chance to step down with much more dignity on February 18 after the people had spoken once again, this time against him. He did neither.

The long list of achievements he enumerated as his last hurrah, in surreal contrast to his 1999 speech, sounded like it was a shower of all that was good and prosperous that came and went. It’s a shame that, despite his achievements as a once-popular leader and the face the world had come to know Pakistan by, he should have been his own undoing. The man was never the evil he had come to be portrayed as by his opponents, especially in his last year in office.

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