All Hell Breaks Loose in Pakistan
Filed under: Pakistan
First she's free. Then she's not. Then she is again. And then she's not. You'd think her last name was Gandhi.
Pakistani freedom fighter Benazir Bhutto was back under arrest in Lahore yesterday, her headquarters there besieged by nearly 1,000 soldiers to prevent her from carrying out a protest march to Islamabad. The U.S. responded by dispatching an emergency mission led by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte to try to convince the clearly demented military dictator General Pervez Musharraf to release his grip on the nation's jugular. And Bhutto announced that her party may be forced to boycott the coming elections, creating a national crisis. When asked whether she might flee the country, she boldly declared: "I prefer to live in Pakistan in jail than to leave."
Go baby, go! We're coming over, and we won't come back til it's over over there!
Those who love democracy can't help but be stirred by this courage, nor can they do other than heap scorn on places like Russia where a cowardly mass population prefers their craven "safety" to safeguarding their liberty. After all, despite her direct confrontation of the regime of a military dictator, Bhutto is still alive, and capturing the imagination of the world, because of the rock-solid support she's getting from the people she's risking everything to liberate. Anna Politkovskaya can hardly say the same. Yesterday, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin clearly stated he is no different from Musharraf, declaring: "If the people vote for [my party] United Russia [in Russia's upcoming parliamentary elections], it means that a clear majority of the people put their trust in me, and in turn that means I will have the moral right to hold those in the Duma and the Cabinet responsible for the implementation of the tasks that have been set as of today. In what form I will do this, I cannot yet give a direct answer. But various possibilities exist." To be sure he will "win," Putin has barred access to Russia's polls by foreign observers and seized the campaign literature of rival parties while refusing to engage in public debate with them. Stalin, redux.
Where is Russia's Bhutto? Nowhere to be seen.
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