Nearly nine years after he seized power in a bloodless coup, Pakistan's beleaguered President Pervez Musharraf has decided to call it a day.
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Dressed in a dark suit and looking sullen, the former army chief announced his resignation in a hastily arranged live televised address. "I hope the nation and the people will forgive my mistakes," he said, his voice thick with emotion. "Every decision I made was only with noble intentions."
Musharraf maintained his composure, but occasional flashes of indignation underscored the fact that the decision to step down was hardly his alone. It came days after the four-month-old coalition government decided to seek Musharraf's impeachment and the country's four provincial legislatures overwhelmingly passed what were in effect no-confidence votes against the President. Musharraf, a former commando who has braved two wars, was plainly reluctant to surrender, but the prospect of public humiliation at the hands of his political opponents proved decisive. "The coalition has decided that I am part of the problem and not the solution," Musharraf conceded in his speech. "I could fight back and answer back, but that may have led to deepening uncertainty."
Many analysts believe that a discreet intervention by the new army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, may have helped Musharraf make up his mind. Over recent months the army has been keen to rebuild its much-damaged domestic image and distance itself from politics. Any active effort on its part to save Musharraf would have only aroused popular disquiet at a time when the army is struggling to tame militancy in the country's wild North-West Frontier Province.
In pockets of the Pakistani capital yesterday, political activists took to the streets, exultantly raising chants against Musharraf. The scenes were reproduced in other major cities, chiefly Lahore, where political power lies with Musharraf's most devoted political enemy, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif - the man Musharraf overthrew in 1999, who now leads the second-largest party in the coalition government. Keen observers of Pakistan's turbulent years could not help but notice the irony. When Sharif's government fell, delighted Pakistanis poured onto the streets to cheer the army's intervention. Now the tables have turned. The civilian coalition government has faced down the former general, and recent opinion polls establish Sharif as the country's most popular politician.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/inpakistanmusharrafbowsout
