Word: musharraf
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...text messages started arriving around midnight. They came with lists of names of opposition leaders and party workers aligned against Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf. One by one they had been arrested and detained - some thrown in jail, others kept under house arrest. They were given 30-day detention orders and arrested for breach of public safety ordinances, though they had done nothing yet. "Has Mush gone Mad?" asked one instant message. "Let them do their worst," said another. "We will carry...
...This week Musharraf, who overthrew Sharif in a bloodless coup eight years ago, plans to file nomination papers for another bid for the presidency, a five-year term that would keep a man the U.S. calls its best ally in the war on terror in power, but that also risks further destabilizing a nuclear-armed nation that is teetering on the edge of a militant Islamic insurgency. Elections will be held October 6 and will be conducted by an electoral college made up of the national and provincial assemblies...
...Opposition parties hold that Musharraf's second bid for the presidency violates the country's constitution, a somewhat flimsy document that has been bent more times in the service of keeping military generals in power than preventing them from ascending. Officially, the document prohibits military officers from holding and running for civilian posts in the government until two years after retirement. But in 2002, Musharraf circumvented that constitutional clause with a one-term exemption that was legitimated by a then docile Supreme Court...
...Musharraf's efforts to engineer a similar legal coup for his second term started to unravel last March when he attempted, and failed, to dismiss the increasingly independent supreme court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. Since then his popularity, which was at record highs when he first took power from a Prime Minister widely seen as corrupt and out of touch, has plummeted to levels below that of Osama bin Laden (though still higher than U.S. President George W. Bush, according to a new poll). Last week, through his lawyer, Musharraf promised the Supreme Court that he would step down...
...Laden's declaration that Musharraf is an infidel who has spilled Muslim blood further cements his illegitimacy in the eyes of the militants leading an insurgency in the mountainous tribal areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan. They may care little for the intricate political maneuverings of courts and lawyers far away in the capital, but if martial law were to be established, it wouldn't just be war against Musharraf, but jihad against the entire government. And if the Pakistani state found itself at war with a significant section of its own people, its effectiveness as an ally...