Musharraf: moderate who admires Napoleon and Nixon

ISLAMABAD: For an insight into why Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf wants to cling to power, his stated leadership models say it all -- Napoleon Bonaparte and Richard Nixon.   

General Musharraf declared a state of emergency on Saturday, suspending the constitution, just days before the Supreme Court was due to deliver a verdict on the legality of his October 6 presidential election victory.   

He has employed the French emperor's soldierly plain-speaking and the late US president's reliance on realpolitik in equal measure since he seized power without firing a shot on October 12, 1999.   

Since then he has portrayed himself as his nuclear-armed nation's saviour from itself and, since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, as the world's bulwark against the menace of Al-Qaeda.   

Musharraf's critics charge that after failing to restore full democracy and presiding over eight years of military rule, he has fallen to the dictator's disease of thinking himself indispensable.   

"He suffers from a highly inflated image of himself," said Talat Masood, a former general-turned-political analyst.   

"All dictators eventually think that they are the saviour, that without them the state will collapse and that they are destined to play that role," Masood said.   

A whisky-drinking moderate, Musharraf has won praise for trying to tackle extremism and presiding over record growth that has made Pakistan one of the world's fastest expanding economies.   

He has also encouraged an exponential increase in electronic and other media.   

And he has undeniably shown courage in what has been dubbed the world's most dangerous job, in which he has escaped at least three assassination attempts by Osama bin Laden's extremist network.   

Talking about the bids to kill him on his official website, Musharraf says: "I call myself 'Lucky'. Napoleon had said, besides all qualities a leader has to be lucky to succeed. Therefore, I must succeed."   

Musharraf, a former commando, has also referred to Napoleon in several interviews.   

But Masood said Musharraf's insistence he should stay in office to free his country's 160 million people from Islamic militancy was a misconception.   

"To say that he is the one who can fight the war on terror is just absurd, it is the other way round. Someone else is needed to generate vitality and harness the forces which would counter the forces of terrorism," he said.   

Musharraf cited an upsurge in militant attacks as reason for suspending the constitution, as well as "increasing interference" by the judiciary.   

The Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that the official result of the October 6 presidential election, when Musharraf won another five-year term, cannot be declared until it rules whether the vote was legal.   

Musharraf had promised to give up his position as army chief if he won the vote -- a wrench for a man who proclaimed earlier this year that the "military uniform has become part of my skin."   

He was born in Old Delhi on August 11, 1943 and his family moved to the newly-created Pakistan shortly after independence four years later.   

He joined the Pakistan Military Academy aged 18 and became a commando in 1966 but admitted "my bluntness and indiscipline landed me in many a serious trouble" until his marriage in 1968. He now has a son and a daughter.   

On October 7, 1998, then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif appointed him chief of staff.   

Amid political tensions, Sharif tried to sack Musharraf when the general was on an airliner returning from Sri Lanka a year later, triggering what Musharraf calls his "countercoup."   

The premier ordered the jet not to land in Pakistan but Musharraf's fellow generals arrested Sharif and took over Karachi airport, where the plane landed with only seven minutes of fuel left.   

With no experience of civilian leadership Musharraf was forced to rely on opportunist political allies -- and a little research, with him citing Nixon's book "Leaders" as one of his favourite.   

The famously decisive Musharraf is also said to be fond of quoting Nixon's aphorism "paralysis through analysis".   

Musharraf received an unexpected boost after the September 11 attacks when his abandonment of support for Afghanistan's Taliban regime made him a fully fledged ally of Washington.   

But his pledges to restore democracy appeared increasingly hollow and it is thought he may now delay general elections due in January.

He won a five-year term as president in an April 2002 referendum. In 2004 he reneged on a subsequent promise that he would quit as army chief.   

Yet Musharraf faced no serious political challenges until March 9 this year, when he tried to sack the independent-minded chief justice.