Many in Pakistan believe that what ails Musharraf, that is, acute self-obsession, is beyond cure. And if it weren’t for his western friends’ good management of the disease, he would have perhaps succumbed by now. The gung-ho president’s ongoing EU tour and his reception there is just the kind of life-saving shot that the leader needs every now and then. He then returns home to do what he’s best at: play musical chairs with politicians.

Take, for instance, the case he made for a national consensus-based government a couple of weeks after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination on December 27. His trusted men were dispatched to talk to the major political parties, Asif Ali Zardari of the People’s Party and the Sharif brothers of the Muslim League of their own faction. The PPP rejected the idea ahead of the polls and called for an early election, but did not dismiss the possibility of forming a national government after the polls. Nawaz Sharif took up the suggestion but refused to be part of any government presided over by Musharraf. And that’s where the idea was doomed even before it was born. Musharraf backed out of the proposal as instantly as he had floated it.

Sharif, however, has kept up the call, demanding that a national government be formed after Musharraf is forced to step down. He says this because both he and Zardari believe that the current caretaker government is partial to the erstwhile ruling coalition of the Musharraf-backed PML-Q and the MQM, and therefore, rigged elections under its supervision is a foregone conclusion. Sharif also wants the nationalists and the Islamists boycotting the polls to be part of a national government, but the PPP remains opposed to any such dispensation before elections. It sees it as a ruse to delay the elections, and fears it might lose the sympathy vote expected to come its way in the aftermath of the Bhutto tragedy.

... contd.