Pakistan In Tumult

So tumultuous what’s happening now in Pakistan. I had been monitoring the events there on cable news for some days now albeit flippantly and unevenly for my mind is so occupied with some important things. There were the lawyers in glib black suits carrying placards in protest of General Pervez Musharraf’s re-election to office last October 3. And then there was the very dramatic return of a nation’s once adored daughter—-and could still be by many in Pakistan—- in Benazir Bhutto after 8 long years of self-exile in London, with nearly two hundred marchers accompanying her when a very destructive explosion laid the street march not reaching it’s end, killing 148 people and maiming many more.

On November 3, Gen. Musharraf dissolved the Supreme Court, declared emergency rule and went on to detained about 2,500 lawyers and oppositionists, just when the high court would have decided to nullify Musharraf’s re-election on the ground that he was still the army chief when he had sought the said election.

Now the general disturbance in Pakistan halts into a deceitful silence so pregnant with extreme tumult, like the silence is so heavy and strong, that one could actually smell it. Perhaps, General Musharraf smells this and fear and great anxiousness inures in him that now, he offers to conduct another presidential poll on January next year.

But Benazir Bhutto’s camp does not trust anything coming from General Pervez and even with the offer of passing administration to a caretaker government pending the January election, Bhutto is primed to boycott the said polls.

What does Bhutto really wants? There’s an offer for the holding of snap polls on January. There would be a caretaker government that should oversee fairness in the election process.

Apparently, Bhutto wants none other than Musharraf’s resignation from office, which at this time seems like a high demand, a very high demand in fact.

Maybe there’s a middle point to all this. But even U.S. Deputy Secretary John Negroponte is so hard-pressed to find one.

In a situation as tumultuous as this, a middle point is always the hardest thing to find.