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A BOSTON GLOBE EDITORIAL

Musharraf's power

9/10/2002

N GEOPOLITICS, imperfect allies are the most common kind. So it is with Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, who courageously spun the steering wheel of his government in Washington's direction after Sept. 11.

His army and security forces have not caught all the fugitives fleeing from Afghanistan into the tribal areas or teeming cities of Pakistan, but without Musharraf's strategic choice last year to side with the United States against Osama bin Laden and his Afghan protectors, the American retaliatory strike against Al Qaeda's safe haven in Afghanistan would have been far more difficult.

Nevertheless, Americans have reasons to worry about their ally in Islamabad. He has not acted like a Jeffersonian democrat. And, having taken the US side in its war against Al Qaeda, he has made himself a target for would-be assassins and his government a target for penetration by Islamist ultras.

In an interview Sunday with Globe editors and writers, Musharraf gave a vigorous defense of his attempt to endow Pakistan with what he termed ''sustainable democracy.'' It is true, as he contended, that when he took power in a bloodless coup in 1999, Pakistan was nearly a failed state, ruined economically and politically by corrupt civilian politicans. At the time, Pakistan was ranked the second-most-corrupt country in the world by Transparency International, just behind Nigeria.

Musharraf used this background to defend the recent referendum he staged to make himself president for five more years and the constitutional amendments he decreed that empower him to appoint the prime minister, Supreme Court justices, and the heads of the armed services and intelligence agencies. When he spoke of checks and balances, it was to commend the need for what he called ''checks and balances on all power brokers.''

This confection of a democracy controlled from above may prevent a revival of the corrupt system run by Pakistan's traditional political parties. But by depriving Pakistanis of true democratic rights, it risks squandering the good will Musharraf enjoyed among his compatriots until recently. And since his enemies among the fundamentalists as well as more secular nationalists charge him with becoming a tool of the United States, there is a risk that the United States will take the blame for his efforts to keep nearly all the reins of power in his own hands.

Musharraf merits US support for his fight against extremists, his efforts to transform the religious schools known as madrassas, and his recruitment of honest, competent ministers and advisers. But the best way to promote the sustainable democracy he invokes and to preserve Pakistan's crucial partnership with the United States is for Musharraf to permit checks and balances on all forms of political power - including his own.

This story ran on page A14 of the Boston Globe on 9/10/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.