Dear dictator, your rally really sucked
Dear dictator, Your ‘show of power’ in Karachi was, if I may respectfully say disappointing and anti-climatic. Despite all your tall claims of having massive public support, and an equally large Facebook following, you did not garner enough support to draw even close to 10,000 people at your rally. Leaders from your party proudly boasted that your rally would be bigger than Imran Khan’s, yet one can only wonder what happened and where you went wrong. Maybe if the attendees were paid more than Rs1,000 and a plate of biryani, you would have been able to fill the ground. Not only ...
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Another Imran Khan article that’s not about Musharraf’s rally. Sorry.
If Pakistan were a school and voters were the graduating class, then we’d know exactly where Musharraf would fit in. Musharraf would be the angry guy who sits at the front of each class and has a problem with things no one cares about, like the colour of the chalk the teacher uses. He would be a suck-up to everyone but his peers, and be like the head boy or prefect who gets the job done, but really, does anyone like him? His dog (his profile picture on Facebook) would probably be a lot more popular than he is. This was ...
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Musharraf is just not a good brand
The Musharraf brand, if you will, is pretty toxic. For all the talk of grassroots contact campaigns, the All Pakistan Muslim League (APML) rarely hits headlines, or captures public imagination. It doesn’t help that the leader of the APML, Pervez Musharraf himself, is not in the country. He is spending most of his time criss-crossing the United States (US), meeting various local support bases among the expatriate community. I guess his brand value is greatest among ineligible voters. APML’s political strategy remains a mystery. The much publicised Facebook support base cannot be counted on. Musharraf has stated that he will return to Pakistan ...
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What Musharraf and Lady Gaga have in common
Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and General Pervez Musharraf have something unusual in common: They all have an enormous fan following on Facebook. Now for Gaga, who has 22 million fans, and Bieber, 15 million, that maybe an appropriate yardstick of popularity given that they are entertainers and the more they are watched, the higher are the record label sales. In a recent interview with the BBC, former President Musharraf spoke about his political career’s resurrection, asserting vehemently that he is very popular in Pakistan. The assertion may be debatable but I wouldn’t write Musharraf off completely yet. When asked how he ...
Read Full PostAn overdose of Musharraf-ism
Musharraf’s return to politics has generated a range of emotions that are on obvious display judging from the comments on two recent articles. Judging from some of the emails I have received one would hope that supporters of the APML would rise above the bullying tactics of the PPP/PML-N/MQM that Musharraf has himself declared his intention to do. Whether the 50 points are better than the 20 or vice versa is a never ending debate. As politics is all about aligning oneself to one party’s or individuals ideas and at times staunchly supporting it. An advantage of multiparty politics ...
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Musharraf’s vain rhetoric
On October 1st the former president of Pakistan General (retd) Pervez Musharraf launched his political party ‘All Pakistan Muslim League’. According to him his 300,000 fans gave him the strength to return to Pakistan. Musharraf while talking to media apologized for his mistakes that he made in the last years of his rule. He launched his party in London, which on first instance gave an impression as he was planning to run his political business from overseas like a self-exiled MQM leader, Altaf Hussain. Musharraf asserted that due to threats to his life he couldn’t hold the launch in ...
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Musharraf has my vote!
In case you guys missed it, ex-dictator (now plain-suited) Pervez Musharraf put up a video on his Facebook page last night with a rather abstract question for his horde of loving fans. The question was: Are Pakistani people capable of differentiating good from bad? It is perhaps the first time this self serving, love-fest of a page has actually caught my attention – perhaps because this is also the first time I have seen Musharraf actually pose a question which had the potential to alienate and confuse his doting minions, and I just LOVE to see a hero shoot himself in the ...
Read Full PostA journey into Musharraf’s mind
When I was about to leave for a meeting with former President Musharraf in Dubai my friends warned me it wasn’t a great idea. I had written vociferously against his tenure and what was the point in meeting him when he was even out of power, they reminded me. Yet I wanted to go and meet him. I wanted to see what had changed since the general left power and was it wise to write him off yet. Also was he a bit miffed at the extension given to General Kayani? I wanted to know if there could ever be a ...
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