Afghanistan's election crisis has temporarily abated, but Pakistan could soon face a volatile political transition of its own. President Asif Ali Zardari is under ever-increasing pressure to resign. His influence and power is dwindling and will likely continue to diminish in the coming months. By this spring, the Zardari presidency could meet its end.
There have been several waves of pressure on Zardari this year, coming primarily from the Army and segments of the private media -- both see Zardari as inept, corrupt, and unpatriotic. And it appears that the Army is entering into a decisive final stage in its power struggle with Zardari, which began with the latter's attempt last year to put the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the military's chief spy service, under civilian control. Until now, Zardari has called his opponents' bluff, and they, lacking the constitutional means to remove him, have faltered in their attempts to oust him. But cracks in Zardari's political coalition are emerging and he is more vulnerable now than ever.
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Pakistani politics has historically been marked by extreme bandwagoning around an ascending power broker. Smaller parties ride it to the top, but once the political peak has been reached, they vacate their defensive positions and join the attacking side.
Zardari is fast falling prey to this dynamic. In a recent television interview, for instance, Altaf Hussain, head of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) -- a second-tier political party and member of Zardari's coalition government -- asked the president to resign. Hussain has since backtracked after MQM parlays with Zardari's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). But the MQM and other parties successfully prevented the PPP from renewing the 2007 National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO), an amnesty bill that benefitted Zardari and other members of the coalition government.
Without this parliamentary protection, Zardari and his allies are now exposed, wounded, and the sharks smell blood in the water. Some would like to leave him limbless -- without meaningful constitutional powers to impact the political process -- but alive enough to make key concessions and serve as a figurehead. Others are aiming for the jugular.
The Pakistani Army, by all indications, would like to see Zardari go, having tried to push him closer to the exit door in March and August of this year. Zardari's accidental presidency, which was produced by his wife's assassination and political deal making to secure an indirect election, was never quite accepted by the Army, which sees him as overly dovish, if not "traitorous," on security issues, like India, and is on edge about the president's attempts to impose civilian oversight over the military.
The scheduled retirement of Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani in November 2010 is likely to add further strain to this relationship. Zardari, as president, has the power to appoint the head of the Army and other military services. His dysfunctional relationship with the Army could create a sense of uncertainty within the institution and fear that its corporate autonomy and monopoly over shaping national security policy are under threat. As Pakistan battles a hydra-headed insurgency in its Pashtun belt and the United States seeks an endgame in Afghanistan, healthy civil-military relations in Pakistan are critical.
Most political elements -- including Zardari's own prime minister and his party's vice chairman, Yousuf Raza Gilani -- would settle for him to be constitutionally neutered, ending the president's ability to dissolve parliament and appoint military service chiefs. Gilani seeks an empowered premiership. And toward this end (some Pakistani commentators speculate, with good reason), he has been colluding with the Army and elements of the opposition to weaken Zardari's position.
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