Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s president, is locked in an escalating battle with the army and judiciary that will test the limits of the country’s fraught experiment with democracy.
Mr Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party has survived multiple crises. He was elected in 2008, holding out hope the nuclear-armed country can make a decisive break with coups and dictatorships.
But intensifying pressure by generals and judges has plunged his administration into a new drama and eclipsed Pakistan’s most serious problems: economic decline, chronic energy shortages and militancy.
For the first time since assuming office, Mr Zardari’s administration is locked in a power struggle with the country’s two other official centres of power – the army and the judiciary – simultaneously.
The spectacle of the country’s leaders at each others’ throats has been met with a mixture of grim fascination and resignation by Pakistan’s 180m people who have learnt to trim their expectations of civilian rule.
“People feel cheated by the political forces that they voted into power,” said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, professor of political science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. “They are anxious and pessimistic.”
The uncertainty also bodes ill for allies, notably the US, desperate to repair the diplomatic damage done by an air strike that killed 24 Pakistani troops on the Afghan border in November and to win greater cooperation about talks with Afghanistan’s Taliban.
Mr Zardari’s conflicts with judges and soldiers intensified on both fronts this week – triggering breathless speculation by Pakistani television channels that his government was on the verge of being ousted.
The conflict with the military hinges on allegations that Mr Zardari authorised the sending of a secret memo seeking US help to curb the influence of the army after the raid on a Pakistani garrison town that killed Osama bin Laden.
The struggle took Pakistan into uncharted territory on Wednesday when Yusuf Raza Gilani, the prime minister, defied his generals by sacking the defence secretary, who is effectively the top army representative in the civilian bureaucracy.
Mr Gilani announced his decision shortly after the army warned that his remarks criticising senior generals over the memo affair could have “grievous consequences”.
The language sent a shudder through the political class in Pakistan, where frenzied media coverage tends to amplify a belief lodged deep in the national psyche that anything can happen at any time.
Few expect the army to stage a repeat of its last coup in 1999, partly because the military already controls important aspects of foreign and security policy, and finds the obvious alternative leaders as distasteful as Mr Zardari.
In a symbol of the rift between institutions, army commanders convened a special meeting on Thursday at their headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi to discuss the standoff.
Mr Zardari may face a greater threat from Pakistan’s assertive judges, particularly if they feel the military would back them in taking bolder steps against the government after the outcome of a Supreme Court investigation of the memo episode.
In a separate proceeding, judges warned this week they could disqualify Mr Gilani for not obeying a previous order to reopen a corruption investigation against Mr Zardari. The case has been deferred for further consideration, raising the prospect of more wrangling.
“The pressure will be kept up and the government will be painted into a corner after corner, even if it survives,” said Rashed Rahman, editor of the Daily Times. “The ruling PPP has decided, ‘So be it, if we’re going down, we’re not going down without a fight’.”
The most likely scenario seems that the government will stagger on until a senate poll in March and then general elections which many expect to be held in the autumn – a sorry prospect for Pakistanis who want their institutions to fix the country, not to fight.
January 12, 2012
https://www.ft.com/content/46a1f69c-3d37-11e1-8129-00144feabdc0
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