KARACHI, Feb 28: President Gen Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday took a symbolic trip to the Bhutto stronghold of Larkana and said that ‘genuine democracy’ had been established firmly in Pakistan by a uniformed serviceman.

President Musharraf’s visit – undertaken ostensibly to attend the ground-breaking ceremony of a bridge between Larkana and Khairpur – was seen as part of the establishment’s calculated drive to assert its domination of Sindh.

It may be mentioned that after the electoral triumph of the Pakistan Muslim League in the recently held Jamshoro by-polls, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz claimed that the Sindh card was now in the hands of the ruling political party.

He chose not to respond to the opposition’s allegations of massive rigging in the Feb 10 by-elections.

He said he believed that the PML’s ascendancy in Sindh was attributable to policies pursued by Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim.

But political observers put down Gen Musharraf’s visit to Larkana as an army general’s desire to upstage former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was viciously attacked in the president’s controversial memoirs “In the Line of Fire”.

They cannot help recalling that Gen Ziaul Haq also held a huge public meeting in a Larkana stadium to demonstrate convincingly that Mr Bhutto had been forgotten by the masses.

According to Larkana MNA Mohammad Anwar Bhutto, just as unwilling crowds had been bussed to Larkana to take part in Gen Zia’s rally, high-ranking officials of the provincial bureaucracy had been tasked to bring in people to greet President Musharraf.

Mr Bhutto insisted that the president’s visit had political objectives. Clearly, politics

was uppermost in President Musharraf’s mind.

He used his speech to take a swipe at civilian governments of the past, saying that they had done little for democracy in the country.

“All they did was fill their pockets (with ill-gotten money) and enrich themselves,” he said.Urging voters to cold-shoulder extremists and terrorists in the forthcoming general elections, President Musharraf said: “And if you want continuity, vote for pro-government people. They will, in turn, vote for me.”