Staggering on: Zardari’s reasons to smile

Supporters say the president has lasted this long owing to opponents' limitations.

ISLAMABAD: President Asif Zardari’s staunch critics have been betraying the feeling that he is a beleaguered leader and might be on his way out any time after having exhausted almost all, or at least most, options for his long-term political survival.

His supporters, however, have kept on insisting that Zardari still has enough reasons to relax and stretch his lips to maximum to let his hallmark smile play on his face.

“He is in high spirits and has been laughing at those giving deadlines for his ouster,” one of his Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) associates remarked when asked whether the president was worried about his political future. “Not at all…why should he be? He believes he has survived the worst and now there is not much to frighten him,” he continued.

What has apparently been helping Zardari survive till date are the strong limitations his opponents are faced with, more than his personal strengths and political manoeuvres.

The powerful military, a hostile judiciary, an arrogant civilian establishment, lusty political groups based in Punjab and tricky allies make a complicated web of opposition Zardari had been dealing with since he assumed the office back in 2008. Working in isolation or in tandem these forces have every now and then been posing formidable challenges to Zardari to fight with, an outburst many initially thought he would never survive.

But a little over two years down the line it appeared the president has outsmarted all of his detractors — as each of them have very strong limitations to go for an extreme option against him.

The military, as one of the leaked US diplomatic cables revealed recently, did not trust him and at one stage Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani pondered a takeover.

Recently, there have been consistent reports in the media that the military wants to replace the current dispensation with a broad-based, apolitical setup of technocrats.

There isn’t any solid reason why a hue and cry was created and why the military decided not to go ahead with what some reports suggested was a ready-to-execute plan.

Insiders, however, say that the military couldn’t gather enough political support, especially from his stronghold of Punjab, and sufficient international backing to fulfill the desire.

Political expert Harris Khaliq would not agree though. “The military doesn’t care about Punjab or international players when it comes to takeover…that’s why Nawaz Sharif’s government was ousted twice despite him being a popular political leader from the province,” he argued.

“And the same goes for international backing. The military didn’t have any support from the world when it took over in 1999 (Musharraf’s coup).”

The fear for the PML-N, experts believe, is that it was restricted to central Punjab in the last general elections and might be thinking that it would face the same if it either pushed the PPP government out itself or helped military to do so.

The judiciary doesn’t seem to be posing any serious challenge to his government anymore.

Civilian establishment, as it usually goes, always come to the surface against the political governments when it sees the military getting hostile.

And Zardari has so far been able to handle his allies.

“That’s why he has reasons to smile,” his associates said. However, they are unsure how to control the damage corruption allegations and bad governance is doing to the PPP.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 13^th, 2010.