Goodbye!

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries.â€"Shakespeare

In the face of mounting political pressure, growing isolation and the certainty of impeachment, Musharraf has finally resigned. He was politically finished after all the four provincial assemblies, which formed part of the electoral college for the election of the president, had expressed their lack of confidence in him as the president of the country. The importance of Musharraf’s rejection by the assemblies of the four units of the Federation could not be exaggerated. After all, the President is the symbol of the unity of the Federation and a person who has lost the trust and confidence of its constituent units has no political and moral right to remain as the Head of State. The actual impeachment process which was to unfold soon in the parliament would have fulfilled the legal requirement for Musharraf’s removal from the office of the president which he had illegally occupied far too long.

In fact, Musharraf should have seen the writing on the wall after the February 18 election in which the people of Pakistan rejected overwhelmingly PML-Q, the King’s Party, and his rule. But Musharraf, true to his Machiavellian character, refused to face the harsh reality which was staring him in the face. In this flight from reality, he was undoubtedly encouraged by the coterie of his advisers belonging to the bureaucracy and the legal profession for whom their self-interest mattered more than the destiny of the nation. Equally to blame were the politicians of the PML-Q variety who continued to encourage him to stay on knowing full well that their own political future was doomed once Musharraf was out of power.