Security in the Yard

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has become a veteran at marking major milestones in his reign with televised addresses. His statement on Wednesday, made on Pakistan TV and picked up by networks worldwide, came perhaps a few days too late after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in Rawalpindi. Too many conspiracy theories have thickened the air. It is alarming enough that fingers are being pointed to sections of the military establishment. To make matters more complicated, the spokesperson of the interior ministry has stuck by an official version of her actual death, even though video evidence appears to comprehensively contradict it. To revive popular confidence that the investigation would be clean and unmotivated, Musharraf had no choice but to seek international assistance. In his address on Wednesday, he did just that, asking Britain for the services of Scotland Yard.

It seems a long time since that day just two months ago when Musharraf went on air to announce why he was proclaiming emergency. That day he broke into English for a bit to speak directly to listeners outside Pakistan, especially in the West. He pledged himself to restoration of democracy in Pakistan. But he told the West, do not expect your standards of democracy in Pakistan — you have taken centuries to get where you have, we are a fledgling democracy, give us time and bear with us. Then, as in this week, he invoked the evidence of rampant terrorism to convey a need for urgency. But on Wednesday, he used the Yard as a byword for the highest — indeed, the West’s — standards of transparency and impartiality. For obvious reasons of public perception, he could not have sought American assistance.

After Bhutto’s killing there is concern about terrorists nonchalantly picking targets of their choice in a nuclear-armed Pakistan. Musharraf has rightly gauged that the more serious the situation appears, the more imperative it is that his government’s actions carry trust. In countries as strategically placed and chaotic as Pakistan is, the only standards that count are those that are internationally agreed upon. If they can’t evolve them, without convenient excuses, they will have to cede sovereignty to import them.