The president’s strategy — II

According to those who claim Mr Zardari is unrivalled, the PPP has two principal political adversaries — the MQM and the PML-N — and one hostile institution, the Supreme Court. The goal is to weaken both and tame the Court. As for the tactics to be employed these can best be described as ‘whatever it takes’.

In Karachi, by using tactics hitherto associated with the MQM against the MQM, some gains are being made. PPP surrogates have befriended assorted groups, penetrated others and pitted them against each other. In Lyari a fairly toxic concoction comprising Baloch drug smugglers, Kutchi criminals and Aman Committee members are being patronised by the party and, off and on, by the PPP-led police. In other areas, Pashtun and Baloch groups are being encouraged to challenge the MQM’s grip. The idea eventually is to weaken the MQM’s stranglehold on Karachi so that elections will not produce the kind of MQM majorities that have been witnessed in the past. But for this to happen elections will have to be preceded by fresh delimitation of constituencies and giving the Pashtun inhabitants of Karachi more representation in the provincial assembly. New voter lists to replace existing ones, new rules governing, monitoring and supervision of polling stations and vote counting and, above all, a reconstituted Election Commission are apparently in the works.

In rural Sindh, the stronger the MQM becomes the larger and more fervent will be rural Sindhi support for the PPP. But this may be wishful thinking on the part of the PPP, considering that independent and smaller party candidates lost a host of seats to the PPP in 2008 by wafer-thin margins, notwithstanding the sympathy vote for Benazir. As for the PML-N, the PPP goal is to restrict its support to a thin band of constituencies in central Punjab. The PPP initiative for a separate Seraiki province underscores this approach and so, too, the new alliance of anti-PML-N forces.

In dealing with the Supreme Court, Mr Zardari has always held aloft the Sindh card. His willingness to play the card was demonstrated earlier by the ‘topi day’ demonstrations and, more recently, by the provincial PPP’s call for a strike against the Supreme Court’s decision to remove the chairman of NAB, Deedar Hussain Shah, a former judge from Sindh. The call for a strike against the decisions of a federal institution by the provincial branch of the ruling party at the centre is a first even in our chaotic political history. Mr Zardari knows that his is a high-stakes game and a dangerous one. However, he believes that unless he can show that he will go to the brink, he won’t be taken seriously. In any case, rather than go quietly, he prefers to go as a martyr. So, in this respect, at least, the husband has a right to claim as much courage as his wife, however manifold are the other differences separating them.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 23^rd, 2011.