The former military dictator and the President, General Pervez Musharraf, has come back to his home country Pakistan after tenure of more than four years on the 24th March, 2013. He declared that he arrived “to save Pakistan” from the disastrous situation it was going through, especially the terrorism prevailing in Karachi. He said that he loves Pakistan and is ready to take risks to rescue the country from extremist elements and terrorism related activities. He also said that after resigning as a president, he continued to stay in the country for 8 months without proper safety arrangements. So, he wasn’t afraid of any danger and said that he would arrange for his safety by himself instead of becoming dependent on the government for security purposes.
The major reason of his return to Pakistan is the contestation of upcoming parliamentary elections for which he has to face several challenges at present. First, he decided to come back into the political competition once again despite the Taliban threats and fears. Again and again, he was threatened by terrorist groups and there were constant rumors that Taliban groups were preparing to attack him. Second, the lack of political popularity is another challenge in his way because since he had left the country for so long, therefore, he had disappeared from the political scene and many other political groups and leaders had become mass popular. He was quite an influential person when he was the acting military ruler in uniform, but unfortunately, his return is puzzling because he has lost his significance.
The downfall of his image can be realized by the very fact that the flight from Dubai to Karachi was planned as the first stage in Musharraf’s aim of recreating his image after years on the political scene. But the former popular military dictator was met by no more than almost a 1000 people at the airport, who were quite happy to receive him. This was a really small amount of individuals who supported him as compared to the previous image he used to acquire in Pakistan. This was a clear representation of how much his political support in the country had declined since 2008.
Currently, Musharraf is a polarizing power that could more complicate Pakistan’s effort to conduct parliamentary elections in May and allow the transition from one civilian government to the next for the first time in history. He is regarded as an adversary by numerous Islamic radicals and other extremists for his choice to support America in the “war on terror” as a reaction to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. While on the other hand, the people who continue to support him including some members of the military and some political elements, claim that for the current traumatic situation of Pakistan, only he can provide the true security and a better hope for the people by helping to stabilize the country and free it from terrorist elements.
Hence, Pakistan has entered a new phase of turning politics with the return of Musharraf, and the upcoming elections will be quite complicated and problematical because of the emergence of so many diverse voices at the same time.
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