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Musharraf’s farmhouse is not ready yet

Pervez Musharraf

ISLAMABAD: While speculation continues on where President Pervez Musharraf would live if and when he steps down from office to avoid being impeached, one thing is clear. He cannot move into his much talked about farmhouse on the outskirts of the capital as yet.

Located in the capital’s Chak Shahzad, where it is fashionable for wealthy Pakistanis to own plush homes on generous-sized plots of farmland, the retired General Musharraf’s villa-style house is still under construction.

In recent days, General Musharraf is reported to have told interlocutors he would resign provided he is given “safe exit” to live at this farmhouse. But from the picture the farmhouse presented on Saturday afternoon, it would clearly take at least another six months to complete.

Bags of construction material are piled along the driveway. A sprawling house is coming up, but it is only a skeleton of concrete walls yet, with sloped dark green roofs. Some portions of a garden have already come, but a lot of the ground is dug up and heaps of mud are lying about.

There was hardly any activity at the site. This correspondent did not step inside the compound, but from the gates, the gardener mowing the lawn appeared to be the busiest of three or four people present, hardly the beehive the place should have been if an occupant was soon expected.

But even when it is ready, it hardly looks like a place where General Musharraf can lead a secure retired life. It is just metres away from the main road. At the moment, its not-too-high walls are topped with concertina wire in some places. For the most part, it is only a single layer of high hedge trees around the compound wall, more for privacy than security.

As the pressure mounts on President Musharraf to quit, he is said to have made his resignation conditional on guarantees from the ruling coalition that he would not be tried on any charges and that he would be given the security that is usually provided to a former President and a former Army chief.

The Saudis, British and Americans are reported to be working on the ruling coalition to provide him a safe exit. A high-ranking Saudi official, Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz, who heads the kingdom’s intelligence agency, is reported to have made a secret visit to Pakistan to convince the ruling coalition not to impeach him, but allow him to step down with his dignity intact. There was no official confirmation of the visit.

But observers are saying that while the ruling alliance may allow him to walk away, it will be difficult for any government to guarantee his security in Pakistan. Even when he was President and Army chief, General Musharraf’s security was breached to a hair’s breadth of his life more than once. Without the paraphernalia of office, it is bound to be much riskier, with several jihadists and others out to get him.

His choice of exile destinations include Turkey, a country with which he shares a special bond as he spent some of his boyhood years there, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S., where his son lives. But is he safe anywhere, is the question everyone is asking.

In any case, it may be too early to speculate on General Musharraf’s life in retirement. Reports emanating on Saturday from the presidency reiterated that he would not quit, and was ready to face the impeachment proceedings against him.

Ruling coalition leaders, on the other hand, are adamant that impeachment proceedings would be initiated if he does not step down at the earliest. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told reporters in Multan that General Musharraf must quit “in two days,” failing which the coalition was ready to present the impeachment motion in Parliament next week.

PTI reports:

As they move to impeach General Musharraf, the two top leaders of Pakistan’s ruling coalition have received flak from the former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto’s niece Fatima, who questioned their democratic credentials. “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,” she wrote in an article in The Guardian.

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