A register of reports and views from the Pakistan press

It was a charged 24 hours. On Thursday morning newspapers were abuzz about an impending declaration of emergency. Dawn wrote: “A beleaguered President Pervez Musharraf met his senior aides on Wednesday apparently to consider new moves to tackle an uncertain political situation, including the possibility of imposing emergency that would mean suspension of most fundamental rights, political sources said... Population Welfare Minister Chaudhry Shahbaz Hussain told Dawn the PML president (Shujaat Hussain) informed his guests that emergency had become a necessity because of the prevailing situation.” An accompanying article said: “Islamabad and Rawalpindi were put on high alert and heavy contingents of law enforcement agencies deployed at midnight amid speculations over the imposition of emergency.”

By mid-afternoon, imposition of emergency was ruled out. As The Daily Times reported on Friday morning: “A meeting chaired by the president on Thursday again deliberated on the option of emergency rule, after a similar meeting the night before, and decided against it for now.” “US played role in decision reversal,” held Dawn, explaining, “the acknowledgement of this role came from no less a person than President George W. Bush himself who urged the Pakistani leader to focus on free and fair elections in his country.” Also, according to another front-page report: “US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke to President Musharraf twice on Thursday, first in the middle of the night when speculations were rife about declaration of an ‘emergency’ in Pakistan and then later in the afternoon.”

I.A. Rehman asked the obvious question in Friday’s Dawn: “Why did they try to cause a scare by an obviously stage-managed leak? Either they wanted to prevent the judiciary from taking its recent success too seriously or the idea was to test the public reaction to a new dose of emergency. The move has backfired on both counts.” Relief was palpable in the newspaper’s editorial: “The threats facing the nation are grave, and only a Government armed with a mandate from the people — a mandate secured through a fair and free election — can stem the tide of extremism and meet the threats to Pakistan’s sovereignty from many quarters.”

In The Daily Times, Ejaz Haider wrote an analysis titled ‘A still-born absurdity’: “The bad news is that he (Musharraf) did toy with the idea, absurd as it is. The Wednesday-night rumour that the government was planning to impose emergency, and the near-certainty among people that it would, is food for thought. Here’s why. It depicts a very high degree of political uncertainty; it shows the people do not trust the government with taking well-deliberated decisions in the larger interest of the country; and it shows there are elements within the government bent on retaining the status quo.”

... contd.