Daily Times

The swearing-in of the new President of Pakistan Mamnoon Hussain, formerly of the PML-N, is seen as the strengthening of the democratic process by some and as controversial by others. Nevertheless, for the first time in the troubled history of Pakistan’s politics, we have seen smooth transitions of power. PML-N, the majority party, along with other parties and independents supporting its candidate, won the presidential election without effort, which the absence of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) from the election in protest at the change of its date made even easier. As the absence of the PPP was noticeable in the National Assembly, the departure from office of the incumbent President Asif Ali Zardari is passing almost unnoticed. Never has any civilian president been the subject of such relentless discourse, predominantly negative, as Mr Zardari in the five years of PPP’s rule. It is ironic that the president, who appears to be noticeably enigmatic and elusive to media and the people in general, has nevertheless managed to keep himself in the headlines throughout his tenure. As the PPP looks bewildered, to put it mildly, after its resounding defeat in the May 11 elections, with only its traditional power base of Sindh still intact, the exit of its president from Islamabad is cause for an overwhelming sense of dismay for the PPP. The reasons are varied and not all without merit.

Mr Zardari became the co-chairperson of PPP after the assassination of his wife and PPP’s chairperson Benazir Bhutto in 2007, won an easy margin in the 2008 elections as the PPP garnered a tremendous sympathy vote, and formed the government in the Centre, a coalition government in Balochistan, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with ANP, in Sindh with MQM, and was an ally of the ruling PML-N in Punjab (briefly). Despite such unprecedented success, the PPP’s electoral debacle in 2013 has left the party distraught in the present scenario. Mr Zardari, whose biggest achievement as the president was the devolving of presidential powers in the form of the passing of the 18th amendment to the constitution (powers previously misused by successive presidents for dissolution of the Assemblies) is still considered the man with the real power in the PPP. Be it security concerns or the media’s constant scrutiny, Mr Zardari’s bare minimum presence in public painted his government’s abysmal performance in even worse colours. From his reneging on his promise to his then ally PML-N regarding the restoration of the judiciary, to the mishandling of the Supreme Court’s orders concerning the reopening of the Swiss cases against him, to the appointments of inapt persons on very important governmental and high-level bureaucratic positions, to the appointment of a controversial minister as the prime minister in 2012, most of Mr Zardari’s moves have met with severe criticism. His government’s inability to deal with the economic, energy and infrastructural chaos in Pakistan did not help matters much. The willy-nilly counterterrorism measures enacted by PPP and its allies in the wake of growing acts of terrorism was another failure on the last government’s already red-marked report card. The ineffective foreign policy vis-à-vis Afghanistan leaves Pakistan with questionable influence in post -2014 Afghanistan, and with a barely effective relationship with India with whom the brief spell of normalisation initiatives met a brutal dead end after the Mumbai attacks in 2008.

The PPP, much like most of our parties in the grip of a dynastic culture, has always got votes on the charisma of the Bhutto brand. In the absence of Ms Bhutto, the biggest party in terms of its national influence, turned to her family. If Mr Zardari does not announce his decision to stay in Pakistan and be involved in the active working of the PPP, the party that already feels isolated and overpowered in the absence of any substantial leadership, will sink deeper into despair, alienating it further from its core voter and worker, known as the jiyala. The shoddy election campaign without solid leadership ended in an almost complete routing in all but Sindh of the PPP in the May elections. Now if left without Mr Zardari’s tangible role in its work and policy structuring, the disheartened and demoralised PPP is looking at a bleaker future. *