WSJ : Increasing Uncertainty for Pakistan

Increasing Uncertainty for Pakistan

November 14, 2007

How isolated has Pakistan's government become? The country's powerhouse K Street lobbying firm, Cassidy & Associates, abruptly cancelled the $1.2 million contract it had signed with the Pakistani Embassy in Washington just last month in what Legal Times notes is an unusual move. With Pakistan now under de facto martial law and compromise between Pervez Musharraf and the opposition seeming increasingly unlikely, the firm cited what it called "dramatic changes" in withdrawing from the lucrative deal. Pakistan, as Fatima Bhutto, the niece of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, notes on the Los Angeles Times's op-ed page, is living in "uncertain times."

The younger Ms. Bhutto accuses her aunt of being the best-placed person to benefit from a state of emergency of which she has become the most vocal opponent. "Yes, she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does that really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her," Fatima Bhutto writes. "She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference." The two Bhuttos have opposed each other for some time, amid some long-running feuds in the family that founded and controls the Pakistan Peoples Party. A senior government official said today that Ms. Bhutto would remain under house arrest for at least another day.

Meanwhile, Gen. Musharraf insists in an interview with the New York Times that the state of emergency is the best way to ensure the country can hold free and fair elections, and he rejects an appeal from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to lift it. "I totally disagree with her," he says, offering what the Times describes as a vigorous defense of his suspension of the constitution, his dismissal of the Supreme Court, the silencing of independent news stations and the arrests of at least 2,500 opposition party members, lawyers and human-rights advocates. Gen. Musharraf also declined to say when he'll step down as leader of the military -- as demanded by President Bush during a phone call between the two leaders last week -- instead promising, as he has off and on for years, that "It will happen soon."