April 8, 2012
By Farhan Bokhari

President Asif Ali Zardari’s brief visit to India today may have counted for more but for his failure to unite the country that he leads.

Ahead of the trip during which Pakistan’s head of state is expected to meet with India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as well as visit the famous Muslim shrine in Ajmer, Zardari has launched a new political battle with his main foe.

Speaking to an audience in Lahore, Zardari chose to target Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister and leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) with what could not be characterised as anything less than a tirade.

Ranging from a personal attack targeting Sharif for a lacklustre turnout at his late father’s funeral some years ago, Zardari went on to claim that Sharif’s political rise was possible only with Zardari’s generosity. Zardari claimed that his ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) is widely popular in the Punjab province of which Lahore is the capital.
Though Zardari’s comments may be evidence of Pakistan having entered the season prior to the country’s national elections which must be held by March 2013, his choice of words is clearly unacceptable. Coming ahead of his trip to India today, the first such journey by a Pakistani head of state in years, Zardari has clearly further vitiated an already tense atmosphere across his native country.

Expecting key members of Pakistan’s present day ruling structure to be scrupulous in politics is hoping for the unlikely. The PPP-led ruling structure which came to power in 2008, just months after the tragic assassination of its former leader, Benazir Bhutto, has been dogged by more controversy than Pakistan’s previous governments.

Ordinary Pakistanis just do not recall another regime which similarly became infamous for its failure to address popular concerns. In the 1970s during the high days of the PPP under its founding father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the party’s slogans of roti (bread), kapda (clothing) and makaan (housing) stood at the centre of its ideological message.

Today, an apt message like bijli (electricity), gas (gas for cooking) and paani (water) could well be at the centre of the present day PPP’s ideology, for these are in short supply and therefore at the centre of widespread popular lament. Under Zardari’s watch alongside Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and the rest of the PPP, there has been nothing but a glaring failure in successfully addressing such challenges.

Though late in the day, the ruling structure appears to be angling to seek a victory in Pakistan’s next elections. Plans for the future between now and election time reportedly range from handing out cash grants to giving rickshaws to unemployed youth, all supposedly to win favour at the popular level.

No credible reforms

Yet, these gimmicks and they are indeed nothing but gimmicks, will not change the fundamental gaps which surround Pakistan. The country’s troubled economy and the major gaps in managing the public sector deficit, speak volumes about the inability of the ruling structure to begin reforming Pakistan in a credible way.

While in India, Zardari will likely portray himself as a peacemaker, seeking to end a chronic dispute which has run for more than six decades. While such overtures are clearly welcome in the India-Pakistan context, Zardari’s main dilemma lies at home.

With widespread evidence of failure all around, he must first get down to addressing some of the key challenges faced by Pakistanis in their daily lives. But his tirade against Sharif ahead of his departure to India, only illustrates a deeply alarming trend. Left without much to show in terms of the ruling structure’s performance over the past four years, the government and the top leaders now appear determined to raise Pakistan’s political temperature.

By doing so, their hope is probably to vitiate the country’s atmosphere further and slide to the next elections by portraying themselves as the best hope to consolidate Pakistan’s democracy.

For the opposition too, Zardari’s recent remarks present a dilemma. Sharif has time and again gone through opportunities to step up pressure on the government by choosing to agitate on the streets of Pakistan. But each such occasion has seen him back away from confrontation in the apparent hope of protecting and promoting Pakistan’s young democracy.

But the circumstances which follow Zardari’s latest comments may well prompt Sharif to action on the streets, snowballing into episodes of violence. For Pakistan, following the controversies of the past four years, stability may not be in sight for the foreseeable future.

Farhan Bokhari is a Pakistan-based commentator who writes on political and economic matters.
Source: Gulf News