The Pakistani Spectator

The political waters of Pakistan have gone opaque, and the backdoor politics is on the high. While the law minister Farooq H. Naek prepares the 18th amendment single-handedly under the directions of Asif Ali Zardari, Zardari himself gets tough with the President, and President retorts back on equal footings.

This cross firing between PPP’s co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari and President General (r) Pervez Musharraf has somewhat dispelled the images of a flourishing of relations between Zardari House and the Presidency. The proposed constitutional package prepared by PPP hints at clipping the wings of President and judges, and it makes the parliament the most powerful and supreme institute in the country. This is simply not acceptable to the President.

The recent outburst from both sides against each other has occurred, because when Zardari sent the draft of constitutional package to the President, he clearly told him that he doesn’t intend to let go his powers, especially the leverage of 58(2)B and the power of appointing the services chiefs.

Asif Ali Zardari distanced himself from PML-N in the hope that he would manage to convince President Musharraf to become a symbolic figure in true sense, and then would take the credit singlehandedly. He showed his sheer frustration against the President when he said that President Pervez Musharraf was a “relic of the past” standing between the people of Pakistan and democracy and there was tremendous pressure on the new government to ensure his ouster from office.

That shows that Asif Ali Zardari always knew that the mandate of 18th February was anti-Musharraf and people just wanted to get rid of Musharraf. But the shackles of National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) and the immense pressure from the donor countries like United States and United Kingdom had forced Zardari to go in the opposite direction of the aspirations of the people of Pakistan. Besides Zardari is obsessed with proving his mettle and he wants to take credit of changing the system.

Now perhaps Zardari comes back to the senses, and stop begging democracy from the dictator. The only way to get real and true democracy in Pakistan is the coalition of democratic parties who take the tyrant head on and throw him out of the office, and ensure the supremacy of parliament and justice.

As the tension between Zardari and Musharraf is running high, Tariq Aziz, the close aide of Musharraf is in consultations with Rehman Malik, the advisor to PM to somehow use Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani to pressurize PPP. Yousuf Raza Gillani is being convinced by the toadies that he could be ousted by Zardari anytime, and so he should cement his position in the PM house, as he won’t get a second chance like this.

The best course of actin for Zardari is to stop creating smoke screens and align himself with PML-N and strike hard at the dictatorial regime, and before that they need to root out sympathisers of Musharraf from their own rows.