AVE CAMERA: Musharraf's SAARC salute was a cheeky attention grabber

"Musharraf has this God-given gift of looking sincere even when he's lying through his teeth." Karan Thapar, Television anchor

Over the past month, watching television has in many ways become a quiz show called What'll Pervez Do Next? The Pakistani dictator, the man who a western diplomat chuckles "always seems to have a gesture up his sleeve", has in his own rough and ready manner created a fan club for himself.

For Pervez Musharraf that is some achievement. Aside from arresting a few hundred extremists, he hasn't actually done anything. Yet, artful dodger like, he has manoeuvred himself out of one difficult situation after another. As one observer puts it, "He's been dealt very poor cards but he's playing them desperately well."

The game in question is image management. The western media loves him. He's sweet reasonableness on the screen, even cheeky in walking up to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at the SAARC summit in Kathmandu and putting out his hand, following it up with
a salute to the world.

He writes his own lines, they say. On January 12, as he made his anti-jehadi speech to his people, he read not from a teleprompter but a dishevelled bunch of papers torn out of a pad. Was his speech genuinely scribbled till the last minutes? Either that or the papers were deliberately arranged to present the picture of a more human and, therefore, more disorganised general.

SPECTACULAR TWINS: Image makers reckon Musharraf aspires to Powell's tough talking but humane military man image

"Before 9/11 the only persons he easily duped were sections of the Indian media at the Agra summit." G. Parthasarathy, Former Indian diplomat

Musharraf's designer nonchalance has had its impact. Indian image gurus are suitably impressed, even if hard-nosed diplomats still have their doubts. It is a case, says one public relations practitioner, of "weak fundamentals, maximum returns".

The impromptu handshake with Vajpayee in Kathmandu was undeniably good TV. He seemed to be telling the world, "India is sulking and spoiling a south Asian show. I'm willing to go down more than half way." Karan Thapar, television journalist who famously interviewed Musharraf, describes it as "a visual sound bite, if you forgive the oxymoron". On his part, G. Parthasarathy, former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, is dismissive, "It was a one-day wonder. People saw through it. Publicity is no substitute for policy."

There has, however, been a consistency to Musharraf's ways. The attempt to present himself as a modernist and a moderate goes back to his early days in power, when he took over after the coup of October 1999. He hired Javed Jabbar-a fellow Mohajir with roots in Tamil Nadu and Musharraf's friend from his Karachi days-as a sort of spin doctor. Jabbar, described by one observer as a "hard-drinking political opportunist", used to run an advertising agency before becoming media aide to Benazir Bhutto and then to Farooq Leghari, former Pakistani president.

On switching allegiance to Musharraf, Jabbar apparently went out of his way to tread on the toes of Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar and presidential spokesman Rashid Qureshi. He was soon out of favour.

Nevertheless, Jabbar's lessons are still being put to use by Musharraf. He appears in a suit, especially when he is targeting the West-or increasingly the Pakistani middle class-with his message. He looks you straight in the eye, speaks directly and in an English intelligible to television audiences.

Indian representatives seem to suffer in comparison. As one former diplomat puts it, "Vajpayee is just not a television person and Jaswant Singh comes across as pompous and ponderous." Certainly the Indian foreign minister's propensity to use horribly complicated words doesn't always help.

Musharraf has another, if unconventional, advantage over his civilian adversaries. Alyque Padamsee, communications specialist, points out that people tend to see soldiers as straightforward: "Take Manekshaw or Eisenhower. We just don't repose the same trust in politicians."

Drawing from his background in theatre, Padamsee says, "The power of the uniform is underestimated. I would advise Musharraf to wear it more than a business suit. That he wears spectacles also gives him a softer look, a certain gentleness and vulnerability." It's the sort of semiotic mix that Colin Powell, himself a bespectacled general, uses. Powell's, says Padamsee, is the sort of image that Musharraf should aspire to.

Funnily enough few see Musharraf as a consummate television performer like, say, Bill Clinton or Tony Blair. "He's not a great speaker," says Padamsee, "his television performance is just okay." As for the salute, the soldier's ultimate signal, Musharraf, it is
felt, is prone to overplaying the trick.

Thapar puts things in perspective, "No one expects a person being interviewed to have answers to everything. They just want a certain logic to what is being said." It also helps that Musharraf is almost always available for interviews, particularly to western channels. "When he says tough things on television, like he did on January 12," says one analyst, "people like the courage." Reality TV or otherwise, Musharraf's courage before the camera show has won him unlikely fans in India as well.

Primetime wars are only a minor aspect of diplomacy. Musharraf's real test was and is his interaction with western leaders who saw him as a pariah and his country as a proto-fundamentalist basketcase-till September 11. Here too Musharraf has cultivated his interlocutors.

When Powell came to the subcontinent shortly after the World Trade Center was destroyed, Musharraf was an unknown quantity. The US secretary of state half expected entreaties on Kashmir, impassioned complaints about India, demands for military help against the big neighbour. Instead, all Musharraf spoke of was the economy, all he sought were enhanced quotas for Pakistan's textile industry, which post-9/11 was on the ropes.

For a man whose clear and resolute commitment to seizing Jammu and Kashmir from India is doubted by few, it must have been tough to play pretender. He pulled it off.

A western diplomat in Delhi admits he has heard the story but stresses, "That was exactly what Jaswant did when he went to America right after 9/11. The Americans expected him to come with a shopping list. He asked for nothing. And were they impressed."

Parthasarathy too is cautious, "The West's perceptions of Musharraf changed after September 11 because he served its purposes better than, say, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt or Saudi Arabia. And in the US and UK the press simply falls in line with the establishment on such foreign policy issues." He argues that India's pressure diplomacy after the attack on Parliament on December 13 is what has coerced the West into coercing Musharraf into acting against extremists. The Pakistani press is praising the Indian Government for its atmospherics, the former high commissioner says.

That defines the contest-the institutional strength of the Indian foreign office up against a canny, almost impish operator answerable only to himself. Pervez Musharraf may not win the war or even the peace; but he would be a shoo-in at the political Oscars.