Media reports suggest that President Musharraf is ready to quit, and that the PPP would make his exit "very dignified". A senior advisor to the Gilani government has been quoted by Reuters that threatened by possible impeachment, the President is reconciled to stepping down before he is forced out of office.
All this looks so much possible when one recalls the President's promise that should there be a move for his impeachment he would call it a day. Ever since the electoral debacle of his king's party last February, there has been an incessant harangue that he should leave the stage, but hasn't he been surprising his detractors with his amazing ability to survive the challenges that he confronts almost on a daily basis.
His resistance, however, appears to be breaking down now that the attack undermining his tenacity comes from his erstwhile uniformed colleagues. In the last one week or so, retired generals have come up, individually and collectively, with a demand for his trial alleging that as army chief General Musharraf had undermined national security by undertaking an ill-advised adventure in Kargil.
One of his closest former military colleagues has even accused him of ordering use of phosphorous grenades against besieged students of Jamia Hafsa in the compound of Lal Masjid. Nawaz Sharif, who is a partner in the PPP-led coalition at the Centre, has endorsed the generals' demand, making a public claim that the then army chief, General Musharraf kept him in the dark about the Kargil misadventure.
Indeed, with the lawyers' planned long march - which has the potential to trigger a mass movement threatening to take the coalition government off its hinges - only a couple of days away the issue of the President's future has come under sharper spotlight.
As it happens at the end with all absolute rulers, the horde of friends and cronies have already deserted President Musharraf as his enemies, who bay for his blood, are mushrooming. But certainly President Musharraf is not in for a fate met by Nicolae Ceausescu, the man who ruled Romania with an iron hand till 1989 when his people came to him to tell him their side of the story.
The PPP leadership owes President Musharraf the debt of 'rehabilitating' them, mainly by promulgating the National Reconciliation Ordinance, 'invented' with benevolent assistance of some important international guarantors. Even the present army chief at one stage was privy to the Musharraf-Benazir parleys that sired the NRO. Rightly then, Asif Zardari consistently tried to replace politics of revenge and confrontation with across-the-board reconciliation, inspired as he was by his sense of repaying that debt.
But after the elections the political reality that emerged made him believe that the PPP should not appear to be wildly out-of-step with democratic forces, particularly with civil society and the lawyers' community. Therefore, he would very much like that before June 10 when lawyers would be on the streets, the President should quietly walk into the sunset by offering his resignation. It is said, one has to give something to get something. That is how President Musharraf gets a 'dignified exit'.
Under the constitution, President Musharraf still has the power to dissolve parliament and dismiss the government, and it would be naïve to bet that he would not use it. A much less powerful Ghulam Ishaq Khan, whose only weapon under the pillow was a copy of the constitution, twice exercised his powers under 58(2)b. Surrendering the option to use 58(2)b might be the quid pro quo for guarantee of safe and dignified exit.
The ball is said to be in Musharraf's court. Reports that the United States and Saudi Arabia are involved in clinching such a deal lend credence to what the government advisor had told the foreign news agency.
With due respect to all who have taken principled positions on the future of President Musharraf, we say let search for a solution to the prevailing imbroglio be guided by pragmatism in that politics is an art of the possible. Let President Pervez Musharraf resign on his own leaving the stage with dignity.