Articles
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2008, pages 36-37
The Subcontinent
Pakistan’s New President Zardari Seeks To Consolidate His Hold on Power
By M.M. Ali
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BY A WIDE margin (481 votes out of 702), members of Pakistan’s National Assembly, Senate, and four provicial assemblies on Sept. 6 elected Asif Ali Zardari, widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and co-chairman of her Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), to a five-year term as president. He succeeds former Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who resigned Aug. 19 rather than face impeachment.
Since his wife’s Dec. 27, 2007 assassination, Zardari has maneuvered his way up party and parliamentary ladders. In the Feb. 18 parliamentary elections, the PPP and Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N parties defeated Musharraf’s PML-Q, with the PPP emerging as the largest party in the National Assembly, followed by the PML-N. Zardari and Sharif formed a coalition government and appointed as prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, an unassuming PPP man from Punjab, Sharif’s home base.
Until Aug. 19, Zardari worked with Sharif and managed to have all the corruption charges against himself dropped—including those of foreign exchange misappropriation pending against him in Switzerland. However, fearing that the judges dismissed by Musharraf on Nov. 3, including Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhri, were likely to reopen the cases against him, Zardari reneged on his commitment to Sharif to restore the judges to their positions. In protest, Sharif withdrew his party from the coalition government and fielded his own presidential candidate, retired Justice Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui. Mushahid Hussain ran as the PML-Q candidate. Zardari has since enticed some of the dismissed judges to take new oaths of office and return to the judiciary. As of this writing, however, Chaudhri and some others have declined to take a new oath, and remain off the bench.
Zardari has spent most of his time and energy on securing his position as head of the PPP, allying himself with Sharif only in order to deal with Musharraf. Sharif, on the other hand, with his smaller party, was in the coalition as a matter of political necessity. With Musharraf gone, his value to the coalition receded. Zardari therefore lost no sleep when his coalition partner left.
Meanwhile, in an apparent effort to keep Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz, chief minister of Punjab, otherwise occupied—and hence out of President Zardari’s hair—the government’s National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has reopened corruption charges against the siblings. The Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing for Oct. 14.
The only group left for President Zardari to worry about is the lawyers, who have demonstrated their willingness to take to the streets in support of an independent judiciary with Iftikhar Chaudhri as chief justice. Given the changed political environment, however, the lawyers also realize that their cause is very much weakened today.
Zardari’s election has been received more enthusiastically abroad than at home. President George W. Bush has expressed his willingness to help him address Pakistan’s economic difficulties and fight terrorism. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown expressed satisfaction at Pakistan’s election of a civilian president. At home, however, except for loyal PPP members, many Pakistanis remember Zardari’s past reputation as “Mr. 10 Percent” and fear that his inexperience will be an impediment in his new position.
As always, the country’s law and order situation is rather precarious, with numerous bomb blasts in various parts of the country and one on election day in Peshawer, a town bordering Afghanistan. Even Prime Minister Raza Gilani’s motorcade was attacked in Islamabad on Sept. 5—two days after Zardari, fearing for his life, had moved from his private home in Islamabad to the prime minister’s official residence.
Clashes between Taliban fighters and Pakistani forces continued in the Waziristan area bordering Afghanistan, and a temporary Ramadan truce failed to completely quell unrest in the frontier province, especially in the Swat Valley. At the same time, despite Islamabad’s strong protest against a U.S.-led coalition ground attack against the Taliban in North Waziristan, U.S.- and NATO-led air attacks in Pakistan have increased.
Pakistanis attribute the resurgence of the Taliban in the region to help from abroad. They often wonder, for example, why India maintains five consulates in Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan. The new PPP government agrees with the U.S. administration that the terrorist threat in the area needs to be adequately met before it spreads to the rest of the country. It’s a matter of survival not only for the government of President Asif Ali Zardari, but for the outgoing Bush administration as well.
India-U.S. Nuclear Deal
The controversial India-U.S. nuclear deal cleared one more hurdle when, on Sept. 6, the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) approved a waiver to India for the supply of nuclear technology and materials—despite the fact that India has not signed either the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Therefore, according to its guidelines, the NSG was prohibited from dealing with India. India’s verbal assurances that it would not share any nuclear material it acquired with non-nuclear countries, along with strong U.S. pressure, succeeded in getting the waiver granted. However, China, which abstained from voting, worried that the waiver would encourage other countries to enter the nuclear field and/or expand their existing programs.
The final hurdle for the India-U.S. deal is ratification by the U.S. Congress, which is scheduled to recess at the end of September. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised to push hard to secure congressional approval before then.
India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was scheduled to make a two-day visit to Washington Sept. 25 and 26, during which he was expected to personally thank President Bush for his help with the nuclear agreement. According to press reports, it will generate around $100 billion of economic activity in India over the next 20 years and create thousands of American jobs as well. The immediate beneficiaries, however, are likely to be India’s longtime nuclear benefactors, Russia and France. American companies eager to bid on contracts for the estimated 30 reactors to be constructed not only must await congressional ratification of the treaty, but face the challenge of establishing new relationships after more than 30 years of U.S. nuclear sanctions on India.
On the religious front, right-wing Hindus have passed laws prohibiting Hindus from changing their religion. This issue has now surfaced in the state of Orissa, where in the month of August alone more than 20 Christians were killed and nine churches burned to the ground. Christians have always been considered “soft targets” because they do not respond to force with force. With general elections scheduled for next year, such incidents can be expected in other parts of India as well.
The situation in Indian-held Kashmir has deteriorated in recent weeks. This followed the allotment of vast tracts of land belonging to Kashmiri Muslims to Hindu pundits (religious men). The allotment was withdrawn after Muslims protested and launched street demonstrations. When the agitation persisted, Indian troops stationed inside Kashmir subdued the demonstrations by force and arrested their Kashmiri leaders. Several major Indian newspapers have called the army action undemocratic, and some have even urged Delhi to allow Kashmiris to decide their own future. Kashmiri Muslims, of course, have openly demanded freedom and the creation of an independent Kashmir state. India, however, fears that such a move will cause a domino effect in other parts of the country, possibly even leading to the nation’s breakup.
Prof. M.M. Ali is a specialist on South Asia based in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.
