The End of the Road? President Asif Zardari

A quick glance at the newspapers (and the December issue of Newsline, which will be out next week) is enough to know that President Zardari is in trouble. The opposition sees Zardari as a vulnerable president who is being forced to surrender on every key issue: first the judiciary and now the National Reconciliation Ordinance; even the victory over the Kerry-Lugar Bill was a Pyrrhic one since the government was forced to defend and debate the wisdom of receiving over a billion dollars a year. Erstwhile allies of the PPP such as the ANP, MQM and JUI-F are distancing themselves from Zardari and it would hardly be surprising if their loyalties are up for auction.

Zardari’s resignation aside, there are no constitutional methods to force his removal. The PPP is unlikely to have the courage to vote him out, especially in the midst of a massive PR push by the party in support of their co-chairman. And the day Zardari resigns is the day Imran Farhat holds on to a regulation slip catch.

The army, then, is the only force that can dislodge the president. All the talking heads on television agree that the army, unhappy about Zardari’s belief that the head of state should have a say in foreign policy, are working behind the barracks to undermine his presidency. If we are all agreed that an army-engineered removal, whether its an actual coup or not, is undesirable, it would beneficial to look at the events leading up to the dismissal of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977, particularly the conduct of the opposition.

It is accepted that ZAB massively rigged the ‘77 elections to get a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly; equally there is little doubt that the PPP would have got a simple majority in fair elections. In such a situation, the opposition parties, combined under the rubric of the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA), was in no mood to simply have fresh elections called, a compromise ZAB was willing to consider. The PNA’s burning desire to have ZAB removed at all costs made them inflexible and receptive to army intervention. In his book And Then Martial Law Was Imposed, Prof Ghafoor Ahmed quotes Begum Wali Khan of the ANP telling Maulana Mufti Mahmud of the JUI: “Let martial law be imposed because only such a step would guarantee holding of elections within 90 days.”

Unlike the PNA, the PML-N is still trying to keep the army at arm’s length. After the army spoke out against the Kerry-Lugar Bill, PML-N MNA Javed Hashmi, despite agreeing with the army’s criticism, stood on principle. In a speech to the National Assembly, he said, “It’s not the job of armed forces to give statement [on the Kerry-Lugar Bill], as Parliament is the supreme body and has the right to make decisions on all the national important issues.” Still, there is a danger that as the PML-N steps up its anti-Zardari campaign, it will have little chance of success without allying itself to the army.

The PML-N, as it tries to bring other parties into its movement against the president, should also keep in mind that the PNA was beset by constant internal bickering. The National Democratic Party’s Sherbaz Mazari is quoted as saying in General K.M. Arif’s Working for Zia, “The nine-party alliance is grotesquely ill-assorted and, should it win, it is unlikely to hold together for more than six months.” The same would apply to any broad-based coalition that Nawaz Sharif may be able to muster. Even if they remove Zardari from office, there is bound to be a split as the disparate parties vie for the spoils of power, creating a situation that is ripe for army intervention.

Zardari, too, should learn a lesson or two from the events of 1977. As the army began to turn against Bhutto, never having been his biggest fans in the first place, retired service chiefs such as Lt Gen Gul Hassan and Air Marshal Rahim, both of whom were serving the government abroad, resigned their positions and publicly spoke out against the prime minister. We already have a group of ex-servicemen, many of whom have close ties to the PML-N, taking to the airwaves to berate Zardari. What the president should not do is try to appease the army with gestures that achieve nothing but show how weak his standing is. This is exactly the mistake Bhutto made when, in trying to win over the army, he gave General Tikka Khan a Senate seat.

Pakistan today is still some distance away from replicating the events of 1977. My fear is that the PML-N may be underestimating the army and inadvertently setting the stage for the ten-year-rule of President Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.