Self-imposed exile: Musharraf promises another homecoming

Says he will return to Pakistan within a week of interim govt’s installation to lead his party in the next elections.

DUBAI:

Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who also heads the All Pakistan Muslim League (APML) announced on Friday that he would return home within one week of the formation of an interim government to contest the upcoming general elections. 

“Under the advice of all my party men, we have decided that as soon as the interim government is in place, which we hope will be on March 16, within a week of that I will go back to Pakistan,” he told a news conference in Dubai.

Musharraf last year delayed a planned homecoming indefinitely after the government warned that he would be arrested upon arrival and few commentators in Pakistan believe he will return this time.

A caretaker administration is scheduled in mid-March to replace the Pakistan Peoples Party-led government, which will become the first elected civilian administration in Pakistan to complete a full-term in office.

Elections are expected to be held sometime in May.

Musharraf is wanted in Pakistan over the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in a gun and suicide attack after an election rally in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007.

But he denied there was any case against him and said he was not afraid. “People say there are cases against me and there is danger. I am not afraid of dangers and I leave it to God,” Musharraf said.

“We, this party of mine, All Pakistan Muslim League, will participate in the coming elections and we will Inshallah put up candidates in almost all the constituencies of Pakistan,” he said.

Asked if he planned to run for president, Musharraf said: “The presidency will come at a later stage. Now I’m going back for the parliamentary elections and hope my party does well.”

Musharraf founded the APML in 2010 in the United Kingdom. He has lived in London and Dubai since stepping down in August 2008, but much of his power base in Pakistan has evaporated.

Commentators question whether he has enough loyalists in the military to prevent him from being arrested in Pakistan and whether the army is willing to run the risk of having a former chief of staff thrown into jail.

“I don’t see any reason why I should be arrested,” Musharraf said. “We will see what will happen when I land at the airport and take action according to that.”

Musharraf said Pakistan needed a strong, stable government and presented himself as “a third political alternative” to the PPP and to PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif, whom he ousted in a bloodless coup in 1999.

He called for free and fair elections, which he said would only be possible under the army’s supervision.

PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has accused Musharraf of murdering his mother. Bilawal told CNN in May 2012 that Musharraf sabotaged his mother’s security when she returned to Pakistan in 2007 after her own exile. “I hold him responsible for the murder of my mother,” he had said.

In 2010, a UN report said the murder could have been prevented and accused Musharraf’s government of failing to provide Benazir with adequate protection.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 2^nd, 2013.