Daily Times

Bereft of a political majority and buffeted by a series of crises, Asif Zardari has developed a myth of political invincibility because he lasted out his full five-year term as president. Keeping his cool, finessing the policy of political reconciliation, he turned perception into truth. Contriving a smooth political transition after the 2013 elections, he went through with sharing power, as agreed to with Mian Nawaz Sharif after the 2008 elections. Nawaz Sharif’s federal government reciprocated by giving the PPP a free hand to carry out blatant excesses in Sindh until recently. Obligated by rampant violence to support punitive action against terrorism in Karachi, the prime minister is now seeking to reverse this federal patronage because of the army’s reaction to Zardari attempting to avoid accountability through his uncalled for rantings against the army.
Avoiding an army takeover is Zardari’s most trumpeted achievement. The army does not need to take over; it just needs to make its presence felt as a deterrent to curb blatant corruption. Where Kayani was badly compromised, Raheel Sharif has, on the contrary, been toeing the failsafe line with a single-minded insistence about national security being threatened if organised crime’s money laundering of the funds fuelling terrorism is not targeted. Zardari got lucky that he had a Kayani and not a Raheel Sharif around to contend with.
Many faithful followers notwithstanding, the attrition rate among the PPP’s rank and file is high, accentuated by Zardari removing Bhutto loyalists from the power structure, unless they give him their fealty. The PPP originals of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto or those faithful to Benazir Bhutto are missing in today’s PPP hierarchy; most newcomers have no knowledge whatsoever of the ideals that the PPP was created for. They could not care less. Exceptions like Aitzaz Ahsan, Raza Rabbani, Farhatullah Babar (his remaining honesty in Zardari’s proximity is a miracle), Qamar Zaman Kaira, Sherry Rehman and Taj Haider are always there.
The agenda of the immortals surrounding Zardari is only to make money and the fact that they can get away with it because no one can dare hold them accountable makes them arrogant. The fashion statement of the really corrupt in Karachi is the number of police mobiles escorting them. The PPP’s debacle in Punjab in the 2013 elections aside, even in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa they have become an endangered specie with many party diehards deserting to the PML-N and PTI. The political meltdown in Sindh was only avoided by manipulating the electoral system. The ISI and Military Intelligence (MI) both reported massive pre-polls rigging to the GHQ before the 2013 elections took place. Kayani chose to ignore this and did not bring it to the notice of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), thus abdicating his responsibility to the Constitution for the “sake of democracy”. One humbly requests the judicial commission to take cognizance of these reports.
Zardari could not have carried out loot and plunder by himself; he had to have been helped by those excelling in manipulating and politicising the bureaucracy and the police. Zardari was coached on how money can be made ‘legally’ by bending/amending the rules and by putting the right people in the right places to do wrong. Can there be a more blatant act of criminality than Zardari using his presidential powers to set aside the federal tax ombudsman’s orders to recover billions in taxes owed to the government of Pakistan by Malik Riaz and Arsalan Iftikhar? Given his cosy relationship with Zardari, one can understand about Malik Riaz but what reciprocity did former Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry offer Zardari in doing his son this favour?
Good governance requires efficient, dedicated and honest functionaries in government, pressurised by the federal government, National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the army (through the Rangers). Those presently occupying important political and bureaucratic slots in Sindh are only interested in amassing a fortune for themselves and their political bosses, and nobody asks them for taxes on their huge fortunes. Faced with accountability, many have made a fast exit out of the country or have attempted to get bail before arrest. The Sindh government epitomises bad governance by not only exercising authority for nepotism and corruption, but also denying responsibility to feign innocence. A typical example of atrocious governance is the heatwave in Karachi, which has caused more than 1,250 deaths to date. Whereas the provincial government’s response was pathetic, the army and Rangers came to the rescue by opening up dozens of heat exhaustion centres, not only in Karachi but in all of Sindh. The Qaim Ali Shah government busied itself in shifting the blame to the federal government and K-Electric, symbolising not only poor governance but an enduring penchant for disseminating false information. Who will protect the citizens when their right to good governance, under the constitution, is trampled by the rulers themselves?
Soon after his ‘coming out party’, Bilawal fell out with his father and headed for the UK. Zardari is certainly regretting his rush of adrenaline and berating the army. While he can count on many to remain loyal, many loyalists will defect down the line to save their own skin. Despite his public bravado he got his daughters to somehow get their brother to come back to Pakistan. Zardari needs Bilawal to politicise the wide-ranging criminality that he and his colleagues are guilty of. The perception that Bilawal is dead set against corruption in the broad spectrum of bureaucracy by his father’s appointees is contradictory. Defending criminality would undercut his credibility and ability to keep what is left of the party faithful to the Bhutto family.
Somewhere along the line, Bilawal will face the litmus test. Will he be influenced by his beleaguered father? Will he be content with being a figurehead or will he be his own master in doing damage control? As the PPP’s only ray of hope, the party is in real trouble if Bilawal proves to be a puppet of his father. Without distancing himself from the criminals posing as politicians and removing them from the reins of governance, it is impossible for Bilawal to restore mass confidence in this once great party. In a perverse way, Zardari’s outburst might be the defining moment the PPP needs to reinvigorate itself as the dynamic force that it once was in Pakistani politics. In this summer of discontent, can Bilawal deliver?

The writer is a defence analyst and security expert