DAVOS: President Pervez Musharraf lashed out Thursday at what he called Western “intellectual arrogance” toward Pakistan, angrily dismissing claims that rising unpopularity has undermined his authority. In an interview with American TV channel CNN, he dismissed allegations that he cannot be trusted to hold free and fair elections as “totally absurd.”
“The mandate has been given. Why doesn’t the West, which is supposed to be civilized, understand things?” Musharraf said. He said, “Why doesn’t it understand that we maybe are a developing country, we have our flaws, we believe in constitution, we know how to run government, we are not such clueless people who do not know how to run a country, we have our own brains.”
He said, “Unfortunately there is a degree of, may I say, intellectual arrogance that I see in the West which thinks that these developing countries are some kind of people who do not know how to govern, they do not know anything.” He categorically dismissed the PPP and opposition allegations of pre-poll rigging as saying, “Election rigging allegation is the culture that Bhutto’s supporters have been following themselves always,” he said. “But this is the culture that I have changed. The bugs that were there in the system have been removed. By who? By me, by my government. We removed the bugs.”
Musharraf also rejected charges that he quelled democratic movements by dismissing the judiciary and cracking down on some media outlets, saying there were “four or five personalities who actually were inciting the people of Pakistan to agitation.” He said the brief closure of TV broadcasters during emergency rule, which was lifted December 13, was a necessary move. “I closed them down for a few days because they were, No. 1, inciting agitation — some of them; No. 2, they were not showing responsibility toward terrorism and extremism.”
He added, “The misperception is that I’m doing something for the United States or the West, we are fighting for Pakistan and the West must know that success or failure in Pakistan will have an impact on the streets of Europe. Do not create such misconception that we are backtracking, we are following a multi-pronged strategy: military, political, socio-economic. And we are doing very well”-SANA
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