In search of fall guys

Has President Musharraf become a political liability that the Pakistan Muslim League(Q) should fly moving out of his shadow? This question was unthinkable a few weeks back, but in the evolving elections-driven milieu it tends to acquire critical relevance, especially since Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain's atonement last week for 'mistakes' committed when his party was in power, a statement that he later retracted with tongue in cheek.
On return from London where his family members were subjected to humiliating treatment by the British police, as the President was meeting Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the crestfallen party chief told reporters that next time the party would not repeat such mistakes. The mistakes, he is reported to have enumerated, included military action against Nawab Akbar Bugti, the presidential reference against former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the Lal Masjid saga, all of which were fully owned by the President as the high points of his government.
The PML(Q) Secretary General, Mushahid Hussain Syed too has joined the atonement dirge; he has promised to fully rehabilitate Dr A.Q. Khan who was sacked by the President and is presently detained at his residence. Some inkling of the PML(Q) leadership's move to jettison the Musharraf legacy became available late last month when pressed against the wall by the public anger over the looming wheat crisis, Pervaiz Elahi shifted the blame onto Shaukat Aziz and Jehangir Tareen.
The U-turn that Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and company now seem to be undertaking may disappoint their erstwhile patrons, though there is nothing new about it. Rank opportunism is the hallmark of Pakistani politics, which comes into full play soon after elections when 'agencies' take up the assignment of creating a pro-Establishment pliant parliament. How, following the 2002 elections, first a single-vote majority that elected Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali as prime minister materialised and then it swelled into 210-plus assured strength, is an open secret.
Reward was not in short supply: the PML(Q) members were placed into about a hundred ministerial and other remunerative slots, in turn for saying only yes or no, blindfolded and no questions. All the 'mistakes' that Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain now repents were committed with his party's full connivance. When two subcommittees of the Senate on the Balochistan situation, one headed by Mushahid Hussain Syed and the other by Wasim Sajjad, were bypassed and the army operation was launched, there was no protest by the party.
The Lal Masjid was bulldozed in the presence of the PML(Q) stalwarts. And, as for the action against Justice Chaudhry, the party ministers justified it at various forums. Now when the birds are coming home to roost, it is unacceptable that the party should look the other way disowning its role in creating the conditions that led to the multi-faceted crises that beset the nation today. PML(Q) is running from its own shadow for the fear of an apocalypse that stares it in the face.
It had announced it would go to the polls riding the bandwagon of 'tremendous' performance during the last five years of its governments in the Centre and three provinces. But it was a hollow slogan; its hollowness noticeable in the fallacy that the person who was supposed to be the lead player in this drama of great performance was not even considered for the party ticket for parliamentary elections. On the other hand, Shaukat Aziz is being portrayed by his erstwhile colleagues as the chief architect of the colossal disaster now haunting the people.
Meanwhile, the images of PML(Q)'s chief patron, Pervez Musharraf, too, have started disappearing from the party banners and posters. A newspaper report claims that even Sheikh Rashid has removed President Musharraf's hoarding from his election office in Lal Haveli, in Rawalpindi. Then, there is a mutiny against the Chaudhry's in the southern Punjab where parallel power centres have emerged, as anti-PML(Q) sentiments in urban Punjab remain high.
Up against declining popularity of President Musharraf, total frustration over the so-called gains during the five years of the acclaimed 'golden era' and the revolt within the party ranks, the shrewd power-addicted PML(Q) chief is in search of fall guys. Will he find them? Not this time.