By IANS,
Islamabad : A shoe thrown at former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf shows Pakistanis are feeling miserable since they have been “suffering greedy politicians and generals for too long”, a Pakistani daily said Monday.
An editorial in the Daily Times said that Musharraf found himself in a rather embarrassing spot Friday at the Sindh High Court when a lawyer hurled a shoe at him.
“…In a crude and very basic form of protest, one of the lawyers present in the court that day threw his shoe at Musharraf while he was walking into the courtroom. While the shoe missed its intended target, it left the ‘politician’ shaken up and distressed.”
The daily noted that shoe throwing has become a universal form of protest recently ever since an enraged Iraqi man threw his shoe at then US president George Bush in 2008.
“It is one of the few forms of protest for the oppressed, helpless and weak. That Pakistanis are feeling this miserable is hardly surprising; they have been suffering greedy politicians and generals for too long and to see Pervez Musharraf smugly sloganeer during the run up to these milestone elections seems like too much to tolerate for most people,” it added.
The editorial went on to say that by virtue, “army generals, particularly those who have served as head of state, are prone to foolhardy whims and lofty opinions about themselves”.
“The fact that Pervez Musharraf has come back to Pakistan at all, despite facing serious charges…and believes he has a shot at winning back a country he almost ran to the ground five years back serves to show how unrealistically optimistic he is,” it said.
The airport welcoming committee Musharraf was hoping would be in the hundreds of thousands stood at merely 1,500 while public support for his party, the All Pakistan Muslim League (APML), is dwindling.
“The shoe throwing incident validates this point and perhaps points to worse to come for Musharraf.”