Zardari’s Moment

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By Yasser Latif Hamdani

In a strange twist,   the political situation in the subcontinent looks exactly where it was in the 1970s.   Then too Pakistan had come out of a dictatorship which had crumbled under the weight of a grave crisis and an immense tragedy.  In 1971 it was the fall of Dhaka that had forced Yahya Khan to depart.  In 2008, the Lawyer’s Movement and Benazir Bhutto’s martyrdom brought Musharraf down.  Then it was Bhutto who replaced Yahya as the president and civil martial law administrator. Today we have Bhutto’s son in law, Mr. Asif Ali Zardari as our president and statesman who is at the head of Pakistan People’s Party.  In India it is the same Congress Party and in Bangladesh Awami League has won a landslide.  The more things change, the more they remain the same.

It is not a popular thing to say so, but President Zardari proved to be a very impressive operator in 2008.  Challenged so soon with a conflict of international proportions, the President has managed to keep India at bay and win unanimous confidence of the world through his adept handling of this crisis.  He has so far walked the tightrope well carrying with him a motley crew of ethno-nationalists who had in past been at odds with his own party while also keeping an increasingly bellicose former ally Nawaz Sharif in check.  We might have in the President a statesman who is moved by the consideration of how he might be judged by posterity. Indeed he seems hungry to erase his reputation as Mr. 10 percent and reinvent himself instead as a global leader. 

But his greatest test will not come from India or war but his own ability to leave behind a lasting legacy:  a stable democratic Pakistan based on constitution and rule of law.  It may be said that Zardari has managed to take the wind out of the Lawyer’s Movement successfully, but this would be a terrible trap if he is looking for a permanent relevance in Pakistan’s history. A part of me still believes that Zardari will restore Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry one of these days and this author hopes it is sooner than later. But that would not be enough.  He must also cut down presidential powers by undoing 58 2 (B) as soon as possible.   It might cut down the importance of the office of the President but will help raise Zardari’s own stature manifolds. He must also move decisively towards the vision of Pakistan that Quaid-e-Azam Mahomed Ali Jinnah had given it: a democratic, liberal and a constitutionally secular Pakistan for increasingly this country stands at the brink of falling into the abyss that is the wrong side of history. At the same time, he needs to fix the civil-military relations in this country which are at its lowest ebb.  Pakistan’s armed forces, through their ill-fated sojourns in politics have alienated a large section of society and without a strong and popular national army, Pakistani nationhood is only going to erode.  But above all, he must ensure that he does not attach himself to power and quits after his first term in office allowing his party to grow under his able guidance.

Relationship with the US will be another challenge which shall require a masterstroke of diplomacy both domestically and internationally.  Zardari understands that Pakistan’s relationship with the US is essential for both our security and economic future.  He would do well to ignore those- both on the left and right- who advise the government to take a sterner approach with the US.  Here he must realize that elements within Pakistan’s security apparatus will try and foment the anti-American sentiment to bring the PPP government down.  It seems that having taken the u-turn on Taliban, this group is not quite ready to take a similar u-turn on its perceived strategic assets that the various Lashkars of the 1990s are imagined by it.   It is possible that these Lashkars might be deployed internally to against the PPP government.   Zardari must outflank this re-alignment of the security apparatus with rogue elements.   Here General Pervez Ashfaq Kiyani will play a pivotal role for the armed forces.  He no doubt realizes that the best course of action for the Pakistan Army is to become a bulwark of Pakistan’s constitutional democracy, for only that will sustain Pakistan and without a Pakistan there can be no Army.

The President is lucky to have seasoned politicians from South Punjab like Prime Minister Gilani and Foreign Minister Qureshi at his disposal.  He has good counsel in form of Raza Rabbani and Sherry Rahman. His governor in Punjab, Salman Taseer, has proven himself to be a rock in face of PML-N’s right wing storm.   Statesmanship, however, calls for Zardari to mend his fences with two of PPP’s oldest warriors  Makhdoom Amin Fahim and Ch. Aitzaz Ahsan.  As Pakistan moves from crisis to crisis,  Zardari will have to call upon these two men sooner than later.   With these two men firmly back in his fold,  Zardari will finally be able to confront the  challenge that Sharif brothers and their cheer leaders in the establishment are predictably going to mount soon.  For all of the democratic noise that the Sharif brothers make, they have “repented” for their sins and are likely to be reinstated as the favored option of the right leaning elements within the establishment.  PPP is likely to come up against the same forces that thwarted Pakistan’s democratic development in 1954, 1958, 1965, 1970, 1977, 1990, 1996 and 1999. What form it will take remains to be determined.

It is here that the President’s mettle shall be tested.  This is the moment that Zardari must seize- both for himself and Pakistan.

Yasser Latif Hamdani is a lawyer based in Islamabad and blogs on hotelmohenjodaro.blogspot.com.

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Tags: Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan, PML-N, PPP, President, Zardari