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“Pakistan will grow stronger with me as civilian President”

— Photo: AP

UP IN ARMS: Pakistani lawyers protesting against the rule of President Pervez Musharraf in Lahore on Thursday.

ISLAMABAD: “Pakistan will grow stronger with me as civilian President and with General [Ashfaq Pervez] Kayani as Army Chief,” said Pervez Musharraf on Thursday.

General (retd.) Musharraf was addressing an invited audience of government dignitaries and diplomats after his swearing-in as civilian President.

He was administered the oath of office in a glittering ceremony at the Aiwan-e-Sadr presidential office by the post-emergency Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar.

Gen. Musharraf was sworn in President for a second five-year term, this time as a civilian, a day after relinquishing charge of the Army amid continuing challenges to his rule and questions about his legitimacy.

In Lahore, police baton-charged 200 lawyers who gathered at the city courts to protest Gen. Musharraf’s swearing-in, the emergency and the detention of their colleagues. Lawyers observed a “black day” across the country and journalists held protests, while politicians mulled over their options.

The All-Parties Democratic Movement (APDM) — an Opposition coalition headed by Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League, but excluding the Pakistan People’s Party — met in the evening and decided to boycott the January 8 elections.

Mr. Sharif has demanded the reinstatement of the Supreme Court judges sacked after the imposition of emergency, including Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary, as a minimum condition for participation in the election, and said only this would ensure it is free and fair.

But Gen. Musharraf, who broke with convention to make his post-swearing-in speech, said he wanted to make it clear to all those talking of a boycott that elections would be held on January 8, “come hell or high water.”

Referring to Mr. Justice Chaudhary as the “ex-Chief Justice,” Gen. Musharraf accused him of being part of a “well-thought-out” conspiracy to derail Pakistan’s transition to democracy. Gen. Musharraf said he was forced to impose the emergency to prevent the derailment of his plan to guide the country to democracy.

But he hinted that the emergency might no longer be required, describing his swearing-in as a “milestone in the transition of Pakistan to a complete essence of democracy,” and claiming to have “broken the back” of terrorism in the last few days. Commenting for the first time on the return of Benazir Bhutto and Mr. Sharif to Pakistan, President Musharraf called it “good for the political reconciliation” that he stood for. He voiced the hope that they would not take the country back to the “politics of the 90s,” and “will move forward towards a conciliatory, civilised political environment” aimed at good governance.

Gen. Musharraf also imparted a Mahathir-like nugget of wisdom on democracy to the Western diplomats present “on behalf, if I may, of the developing world.”

It was “unreasonable” and “impracticable,” he said, for them to expect that countries like Pakistan would adopt the same kind of democracy, human rights and civil liberties “in a few years, if not months” that their own countries had developed and learnt over “centuries,” Gen. Musharraf said.

Police arrested a few lawyers in Lahore after the morning’s clash, which began when they tried to push out towards the Mall in a procession to register their protest. Some people were hurt in the baton-charge.

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