PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto (BB) on Sunday apprehended that President Pervez Musharraf might use the Lal Masjid incident as a pretext to postpone elections and warned that if it happened the consequences would be "very negative" for the country.
"People say the Red Mosque issue was propped up as a pretext to postpone the elections. If that happens, the consequences will be very negative for Pakistan," BB said. She said, "Many people in Pakistan think that the militants were first propped up by some forces and then sacrificed by them. But I don't want to be cynical. I would rather say the regime had to act as there was no alternative left because we are talking about people who had admitted having suicide bombers in their midst."
BB said some policemen had also been kidnapped by militants but government did not file a case. "The Musharraf government bent over backwards to please the militants. And even till the last minute, members of the Cabinet were trying to give safe passage to those who had killed members of the armed forces and law enforcement."
"Now it is the tip of the ice burg and it is to be seen whether the government will sustain the hard line policy towards militants and militancy or starts bending over backwards to make amends and try to pacify them."
Calling for a post-mortem into the Red Mosque incident, she sought to know how on a government land "two so-called political madrasas were built which were in fact the military headquarters of militant groups that seemed to have ties with al Qaeda."
Asserting that the action against militants in the Lal Masjid was necessary, Benazir, however, said that it came too late. "It should have come five years ago when they seized the land and built the madrasas. At least, it should have come three years ago when they arrested the Mullah smuggling weapons. If it had happened then, the loss of life would not have been as dramatic as it was," she said.
Terming the present regime as totally incapable of preventing Taliban from regrouping and extremism from spreading, she claimed that it was all because the democracy has been de-stabilised in the country. "The crisis can only be overcome when democracy is restored," she said and sought co-operation from US and Commonwealth to pressurise Pakistan to hold fair and free elections. "But the elections cannot be fair when principal players are banned from contesting or prevented from campaigning." She said one of the areas of worry was that the polls have already been, as she claimed, rigged or predetermined. "PPP is in correspondence with the Election Commission of Pakistan.
We have not received a satisfactory answer until now. They have disenfranchised 30 percent of the voters and out of 70 percent who have been enrolled to vote 26 percent are duplicates and fakes."
"So we have a situation where we know the results even before the first ballot is caste. So if vote is caste and it is not counted how can you win an elections?" she asked. "Both Commonwealth and the USA have made it very clear they support the process of fair elections in Pakistan."
Stating that she would return to Islamabad before the end of the year to lead her party's campaign despite threats of arrests, BB added: "I have led the struggle for restoration of democracy from overseas but now the time has come to go back to the country. I know I run the risk of being arrested. But it is a risk I am willing to take.
I will go back before the end of this year, any time between September and December." She said if she is guaranteed a safe return she would go back sooner. "But because I run the risk of being arrested I have to go back at a time when I do the work of campaigning with liberty."
The PPP chief said "my party does not believe in appeasement of militants and we believe that signing cease-fires with them or peace treaties with them, negotiating safe passage for them simply. Emboldens them and worsens the situation because then they reassert and attack once again."
Blaming the government for rise of militancy in the country, she claimed that the Chief Cleric appointed on a government salary was arrested smuggling guns into Islamabad but was released following intervention of a Cabinet minister.
"So we want to know why Cabinet ministers in the Musharraf regime terrorists smuggling guns into Islamabad. We also want to know why Cabinet ministers in the Musharraf regime had tried to justify suicide bombings."
"The people of Pakistan are getting conflicting and confusing messages about whether terrorism and suicide bombers and militants are good or bad. And until the people of Pakistan are taken into confidence about the reality of the situation, it will continue to deteriorate."
She said political leaders like Nawab Akbar Bugti were treated with ruthlessness. "But the same is not true of the extremist leaders. This worries us deeply because we now ask ourselves that how many more political madrasas which are actually military headquarters of militants have been built since the PPP government was overthrown a decade ago."
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