Summary
The depth of his unpopularity is truly impressive. A poll conducted recently by the International Republican Institute, a right-wing American organization for the promotion of democracy abroad, gave [Pervez Musharraf]'s approval rating as a scant 15 per cent. That is a 50 percentage-point drop since November. A whopping 75 per cent of respondents said that Musharraf should resign -- and 62 per cent believed that his government had some role in [Benazir Bhutto]'s assassination.
This popular conviction that Musharraf had Bhutto killed is very useful to the party she led, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), as it guarantees a large sympathy vote. It also explains the PPP's stubborn insistence, in the face of much evidence to the contrary, that Benazir Bhutto was shot and not killed by the subsequent explosion. It seems a niggling detail to outsiders, but it matters electorally since the Pakistani public tends to believe that it is extreme Islamists who blow people up, whereas the government would employ snipers or other shooters.Whatever the Pakistani public chooses to believe, it is most unlikely that Musharraf organized Bhutto's assassination. The political compact between the two was far from settled, but it was still Musharraf's best hope of clinging to power. That hope is now fading fast.See the full content of this document
Extract
As Popular As Piles
Musharraf should go in post-election impeachment
Gwynne DyerTHE opinion polls could be wrong by as much as 10 or 15 per cent, and they'd still tell you a lot about the state of Pakistani public opinion. As the country heads into the election that was postponed for six weeks...See the full content of this document
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