The much-awaited 'roadmap' regarding a timeframe for general elections announced by General Pervez Musharraf, tucked away almost as an aside in his long speech of 14 August, actually clarifies only two things. First, like his military predecessors, General Musharraf intends to be around for a long time, an intention apparent in the pronouncement regarding a 10-year schedule of development projects that he launched in the same speech. The symbolism of the occasion was captured in a somewhat graphic manner by the only chair in the centre of the large stage at the Convention Centre in Islamabad from where the President rose to make his address. Second, by the last day of the expiry of the Supreme Court mandate, i.e., 11 October 2002, the military regime plans to hold six different election exercises in a 10-day period beginning 1 October 2002, to the National Assembly, Senate and four provincial assemblies.
Some hardened cynics have likened the roadmap to that famous description of a bikini: "What it reveals is suggestive, but what it conceals is vital".
- The roadmap did not mention what type of elections are being planned, party or non-party, and only later was it officially clarified that the polls would be on party basis. The confusion arose because the local elections were also non-party, while General Zia-ul-Haq's 1985 general elections had precluded participation by political parties;
- The roadmap 'conceals' what kind of constitutional amendments are being envisaged, whether they will end up defacing the 1973 Constitution's parliamentary character;
- The roadmap 'conceals' the precise date and mode of transfer of power, relegating this key aspect to what is termed as 'Phase 1V';
- The roadmap 'conceals' when political activities will be permitted to be active, as they were outlawed after the ban imposed ostensibly as a "temporary law and order" measure prior to then US president Bill Clinton's five-hour stopover in March 2000. (Officially it was later clarified that these would be permitted 90 days before the polls.)
However, the most inexplicable part of the roadmap is the inordinately long time in the run-up to the general elections. There are 14 long months from the present to D-Day in October 2002. When president Clinton had pressed General Musharraf to give a roadmap in March 2000, the latter had declined on the plea that if a timeframe was provided that early on, "the bureaucracy will wait me Out and nothing will get done in the meantime". But now, that is precisely what's going to happen, between August 2001 and October 2002.