![]() ![]() He is currently limping along with his legs in casts and bandages from a recent assassination attempt, while efforts are underway to arrest him for allegedly failing to mention an illegitimate daughter in his pre-election paperwork, selling gifts he received from foreign dignitaries, and dozens of lesser misdeeds. Its current protagonist, Imran Khan, is certainly eccentric, with marriages to a British socialite, a journalist who later wrote a tell-all about his supposedly degenerate personal life, and now to an ultra-Islamic Sufi alleged to engage in witchcraft on his behalf. It operates on the basis of disregard for the rule of law, direct violent attacks on political rivals, manipulation of elections, intimidation of opponents, misuse of the judicial system, and frequent attempts to kill political figures. This pattern of politics can only be described as dysfunctional. Upon trying to make a comeback in 2013, he was indicted by the country’s high court for involvement in political murders, including that of Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfiqar and twice Pakistan’s prime minister, causing him to flee to Dubai to avoid arrest. When his excesses against political opponents became too extreme, and he was about to be impeached, he fled into exile. Musharraf was the target of multiple assassination attempts but survived them. Later, in 1999, Pervez Musharraf became President through a military takeover, cementing his position by jailing and initiating criminal proceedings against the Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. Suggested reading Does the Right need techno-Trumpism? His turn in power ended in a mysterious plane crash in 1988, believed to have been caused by a bomb concealed in a box of mangoes. The man responsible for his demise was Zia ul-Haq, who became President via military coup in 1977. Ultimately, however, he was deposed in a military coup, arrested, put on trial for alleged involvement in the murder of a political rival, found not guilty, re-arrested under martial law on the same charge, tortured, sentenced to death, and hanged. After being educated in the US and UK, he founded the Pakistan People’s Party and oversaw the drafting of the country’s constitution. Take Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who served first as Pakistan’s President and then Prime Minister in the Seventies. The explanation is most likely a combination of factors: idealism bordering on a saviour complex the addictive adulation of supporters who, at rallies, can easily number in the semi-hysterical millions the push of relatives and hangers-on all hoping to benefit and the lure of all sorts of personal licit and illicit benefits. Here, we have a political system that regularly cannibalises its leaders, jailing, executing or assassinating them with such appalling regularity that one wonders why anyone would ever seek high office. To find out what this entails, we need only look to Pakistan. Step by step, tit for tat, America is heading into the banana republic zone. already the Republicans are zeroing in on Hunter Biden. Who will be next? The Democrats hated and investigated Ivanka and Donald Jr. This time, the consequences will not be pretty - for once a red line is erased, it is gone for good, no matter which party you belong to. If Trump’s warnings are correct and he is arrested today, it will represent a new low in a chain of unprecedented prior boundary violations, including an unannounced FBI raid on a former president’s home with guns drawn. And this was a valuable safety measure, keeping antagonism and partisan rivalries within bounds. To jail a president was, until recently, unthinkable, no matter what one might feel regarding the individual officeholder. Grant and 1872, when his supporters diverted a tax on whiskey into the election coffers.Īt the presidential level, though, the maximum consequence has been impeachment (Johnson in 1868, Clinton in 1998 and Trump in 20), or the pre-emptive resignation of the offender (Nixon in 1974). Accusations of corruption date back to Alexander Hamilton, and of illicit campaign finance to Ulysses S. There were love triangles, duels, extra-marital offspring, flings with interns. From the country’s inception, many of its highest-ranking political figures have engaged in outrageous behaviour - political, financial, sexual, or combinations of the three.
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