NEW DELHI -- Everybody had expected Pakistan's chief executive, Pervez Musharraf, to appoint himself president. When that happened on June 20, most of the world -- barring the United States, which made a big noise -- accepted Musharraf's new title without batting an eyelid.
India's Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who will meet Musharraf in a summit between July 14 and 16, in fact telephoned the chief executive an hour before the announcement and congratulated him by addressing him as "President Sahib (Sir)."
The question -- the answer to which is now beginning to become clearer -- is why Musharraf had made the move. With the country's Supreme Court deadline of October 2002 for the restoration of parliamentary rule nearing, the new president may be seen as doing the obvious: dissolving the federal and provincial legislatures in an attempt to pave the way for elections.