Pakistan’s Blood-Stained Democracy

By William F. Buckley Jr.

Lally Weymouth of Newsweek did a brilliant article published just two weeks before the assassination. She was in close quarters with Benazir Bhutto and then with President Musharraf. Neither one of them said anything apocalyptic, and certainly there was no indication that poised in those conventional words was the gleam of the assassin, or the fright of a victim bound. In short, from the two principals, there were no big surprises.

But Ms. Weymouth’s questions were not banal, and Musharraf rewarded her with a singular frankness. This came early in the interview, when Ms. Weymouth asked him, “Do you feel you stuck your neck out for the United States after September 11 and the United States has not stood by you?” One yearns to write that the following words were “spat out,” but that much can only be inferred:

“No, I don’t. I stuck out my neck for Pakistan. I didn’t stick out my neck for anyone else. It happened to be in the interest of the world and the U.S. . . . The problem with the West and your media is your obsession with democracy, civil liberties, human rights. You think your definition of all these things is [correct]. . . . Who has built democratic institutions in Pakistan? I have done it in the last eight years. We empowered the people and the women of Pakistan. We allowed freedom of expression.”

Musharraf cited as an example of the bias against which he works, the coverage by the Western media of the violence at the Islamabad mosque last summer: “We took action. What did the media do about it? They showed those who took action as villains and brought those madwomen who were there on television and made heroes of them.”

Weymouth then asked the sacred question: “Do you feel you could work with Benazir Bhutto?”

Musharraf: “When you talk of working with her, you imply she is going to be the prime minister. Why do you imply that? I keep telling everyone we haven’t had the elections.”

“Mrs. Bhutto charges that there are going to be ghost polling stations — that the voting is going to be rigged.”

This brought real asperity: “. . . let her not treat everyone like herself. . . . I am not like her. I don’t believe in these things. Where’s her sense of democracy when 57 per cent of the Parliament vote for me, and she says she is not prepared to work with me . . . ?”

Why, the interviewer asked Ms. Bhutto, are the terrorists so strong in Pakistan? Is it because there is support for them from the government?

Ms. Bhutto: “Yes, I am shocked to see how embedded it [terrorism] is. I knew it was bad from afar. People are scared to talk. They say I am polarizing when I say militancy is a problem.”

Two weeks later the lead story in the New York Times spoke of our policy as “left in ruins.” Nothing remained of “the delicate diplomatic effort the Bush administration had pursued in the past year to reconcile Pakistan’s deeply divided political factions.” Another Times reporter spoke of “the new challenge” the assassination posed to the Bush administration in its effort “to stabilize a front-line state” in the “fight against terrorism.”

There are reasons to object to the repository of blame in the Bhutto situation. To the charge that there was insufficient security in Rawalpindi, nothing more needs to be said than that — yes: manifestly there was insufficient security, as there was at Ford’s Theatre in 1865, Dealey Plaza in 1963, and the hundred other places in America where mayhem has been plotted. We cannot know with any confidence just what it is that the Pakistanis have to come up with to make safe the niceties of democracy about which Musharraf speaks with understandable scorn.

The scantest knowledge of Pakistani and Muslim history challenges the fatuity that this is a corner of the political world where public life can proceed with no more concern for militant interruption than would be expected in the House of Lords.

The Bush administration should announce to the waiting world that the United States cannot be charged with responsibility for maintaining order in Pakistan, and does not accept responsibility for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Kenyan presidential race goes down to the wire

Residents of Kibera demonstrate at the entrance of the slum
©AFP - Tony Karumba

NAIROBI - Incumbent Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga were neck-and-neck in Kenya's presidential race Saturday as a delayed count led to accusations of vote-rigging and widespread rioting.

The electoral commission said the elusive presidential result was now expected on Sunday as its latest count showed Odinga's once clear lead had melted away to less than 40,000 votes.

Angry Odinga supporters went on the rampage in Nairobi and across the country, looting and burning despite calls by their party and observers to exercise restraint.

"There are riots all over the country, except a few areas, but there is sufficient security to maintain law and order," a top police official told AFP as fears of unrest grew.

A supporter of Raila Odinga(R) is beaten by two supporters of Mwai Kibaki
©AFP - Boniface Mwangi

An AFP correspondent said hundreds of opposition supporters had faced off Saturday morning with riot police in the massive pro-Odinga Nairobi slum of Kibera, shouting "No Raila, No Kenya!" and "We want our rights!"

Police fired live shots in the air to disperse feuding mobs, while water cannons doused the flames of shops and houses set ablaze by demonstrators.

Protestors also lit bonfires, set up rogue roadblocks and looted shops in several Odinga bastions across the country, including Kisumu, Kakamega and Eldoret, police and witnesses said.

"They want to steal votes. They are counting votes from regions favouring Kibaki and then they want to declare him the winner. We do not want violence, we want our rights," said one protester, Peter Oduor.

In western Nyanza province, a man was shot dead following a disagreement in a polling station, police said, bringing to four the number of people killed since the polls opened on Thursday morning.

A looter exits a store he was ransacking towards Kenyan riot police
©AFP - Boniface Mwangi

Earlier Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement jumped the gun by declaring victory and asking Kibaki to concede, a move the president's camp described as a loser's last resort.

"In view of the growing anxiety and restlessness in the country over the extended delay in releasing the presidential results, we now call upon the outgoing president to acknowledge and respect the will of the Kenyan people and concede defeat," ODM's vice-presidential candidate Musalia Mudavadi had said.

He was forced to eat his words when electoral commission chairman Samuel Kivuitu told a press conference hours later that Odinga's 300,000-vote had all but evaporated.

By 2:30 pm (1130 GMT) Odinga had mustered 3,880,053 votes while Kibaki had garnered 3,842,051, a difference of just over 38,000, Kivuitu announced.

The election commission chairman did not specify how many constituencies were included in the tally or how many were still to be counted.

A crowd of supporters of Raila Odinga gather to demonstrate
©AFP - Yasuyoshi Chiba

The press conference quickly deteriorated into a shouting match between party agents with Odinga officials accusing Kibaki's camp of rigging the results.

Following complaints of irregularities, the election commission announced that checks would be carried out overnight before the announcement of further results on Sunday.

On Friday, officials from Odinga's ODM had started accusing the state of deliberately slowing down the counting process to leave time for results to be rigged and tempers to flare.

In what some analysts had seen as an indication of the way the presidential result should swing, Kibaki suffered stinging setbacks in the legislative elections, also conducted on Thursday.

According to provisional results, voters ousted from parliament at least half of his cabinet, including vice president Moody Awori, as well as the three sons of former dictator Daniel arap Moi.

A looter runs past a burning barricade
©AFP - Boniface Mwangi

International observers said after voting ended that the polling process, overseen by some 65,000 security forces and 30,000 local and foreign monitors, had been orderly and positive despite a few isolated incidents.

The 76-year-old Kibaki is seeking a second term, boasting a solid economic record, while Odinga, 62, has sought to sway opinion by arguing that the country's economic growth has not benefited many Kenyans.

Odinga held the edge over Kibaki in nearly all pre-election opinion polls and enjoyed a clear lead in the early counting following Thursday's presidential vote.