

Beyond the bald facts above, there is little to mark Mr Hussain as presidential material. His predecessor ran the country through a succession of what were essentially puppet prime ministers, appointed with his approval. That is not going to happen with Nawaz Sharif and the PML-N firmly in the driving seat and President Hussain will have been appointed more for his lack of a public profile than because of it. His role will be purely ceremonial and anything he says in public is likely to have been tightly scripted. There is nothing to suggest that he has statesmanlike ambitions, nor anything in his background to suggest that he has the competencies that might underpin such ambitions were he to have them. As a statesman, Mr Zardari may not have been an outright success, while President Hussain can probably be relied upon never to rock the boat, smile in the right places, shake hands reasonably competently and retire quietly into the background. Colourless perhaps, but maybe the right president for the times.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 10th, 2013.
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