By now most readers will have seen the news that Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s President, has resigned from his post rather than face impeachment charges. While for some this might seem like a happy day, a slightly closer look at the situation in Pakistan suggests that the country is not now headed for greater stability or economic prosperity.

Since his party lost the Parliamentary elections earlier this spring, he was already essentially irrelevant. The threat of impeachment announced by Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif in recent weeks says more about the desperation of the new coalition government than it does about Musharraf himself.

In the weeks to come, I’m sure we’ll see a number of accounts of the fall of Musharraf, ranging from, “well, he was bad, but these guys are worse,” to “well, he was so bad that the room can’t help but smell better now that he’s gone.” There might even be a couple of people saying that he was actually good for Pakistan (democracy is overrated), good for women’s rights (he got a couple of laws passed; who cares about Mukhtar Mai, anyway?), and an invaluable ally to the United States in the fight against Islamic extremism (though I’m not sure how anyone could really make that argument with a straight face).

A preliminary account worth reading, which leans towards the first position, comes from Fatima Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto’s niece (but no fan of her aunt or her aunt’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari). Bhutto who starts off with a description of the recent press conference where Zardari and Sharif expressed their moral outrage about Musharraf’s “anti-democratic” actions as President and head of the military:

Zardari snarled every time Musharraf’s name came up, seething with political rage and righteousness, while Sharif did his best to keep up with the pace of things. He nodded sombrely and harrumphed every once in a while. The two men are acting for democracy, you see. And impeaching dictators is a good thing for democracies, you know.

But Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari are unelected. They’re not just unrepresentative in that they don’t hold seats in the parliament - they have absolutely no mandate in Pakistan. They head the two largest, and most corrupt, parties in the state but hold no public office. Pots and kettles.
The rest of the coterie that wields power behind this administration, the attorney general and the interior minister for instance, also happen to be unelected. They serve, and I use the term ever so lightly, by appointment only. Some 170 million Pakistanis have lived under military rule of law for nine years. Musharraf stepping down from his army post has not changed that. Neither did the recent selections. Sorry, I meant elections, obviously. (link)

Here, Fatima Bhutto might be a little too dismissive of the elections that took place this past February. No matter how corrupt these guys are, it does matter that a large number of Pakistanis actively chose their parties to govern the country over others (i.e., the PML-Q). That said, I agree with her in spirit that the current passion for democratic principle exhibited by the two leaders seems questionable, not just because they themselves are currently unelected, but because of their respective histories.

Bhutto also goes after Sharif and Zardari on the law their coalition government has passed that effectively makes them immune from prosecution for the corrupt practices of their respective former regimes, which are widely acknowledged. The new law also makes future prosecution of Parliamentarians more difficult, a kind of preemptive ass-covering, as it were:

The current administration - a party coalition comprising two formerly mortal enemies, the PPP and the PML - has enjoyed five months in office. And what has this thriving democratic union accomplished? It passed the National Reconciliation Ordinance, an odious piece of legislation that wipes out 15 years’ worth of corruption cases against politicians, suspiciously covering 11 years of PPP and PML rule. Bankers and bureaucrats were also given the all-clear. Worse still, the ordinance contains a clause that makes it virtually impossible for future charges to be filed against sitting parliamentarians.

Finally, Bhutto doesn’t mince words when it comes to the dire situation Pakistan is in right now, with fighting raging in the NWFP and an economy in turmoil:

But they must have done more than that, surely? Well, all that really changed is that food inflation has accelerated, oil subsidies have been cut, gas prices have doubled, and those pesky militants in the Swat district the tribal regions have turned up the fighting. Several days before the decision to impeach Musharraf hurtled through the airwaves, a small story came in from the tribal areas: the militants are close, the story said, they’ve vowed to target the government, even to the point of attacking state schools. This is a civil war, the story said.

Musharraf’s departure is obviously significant in the sense that he has been a dictator with a particularly lively persona, who ruled Pakistan during an especially eventful period of time.

But in real terms, he was already done, back in February.