The presidency under fire

The not-quite-rumour mills are working very hard, virtually overtime, predicting the end of Asif Zardari as President of Pakistan, with the actual fall predicted as occurring before he completes two years in office. It is noticeable that the mills include in their account the wishes of the Americans, who are apparently ready to believe the worst of him, and who are said to have a role in his election, and are to have one in his removal. And the role is not quite that of one sovereign state to another, but more akin to that of a superior and a subordinate.
There are signs that not all is well at the presidency. Whatever the reasons, there are reports emerging of presidential corruption. There are too many dubious characters wandering the capital, and claiming the president’s friendship, for all to be denied. President Zardari himself confessed that his predecessor’s resignation, and his subsequent election, were part of a deal sponsored by foreign powers. Musharraf, now in exile abroad, tried to make himself relevant to Pakistani politics by attacking Zardari. However, that did not raise the nation. It will not rise behind him because it was never behind him, Even the NGOs and liberals he so assiduously courted were not behind him because they saw him primarily as a military dictator and only secondarily as the hammer of the right.
However, the NRO, duly promulgated by President Musharraf, which ended the cases against Benazir Bhutto and her supporters, including Zardari, was withdrawn from before Parliament, where it had been placed in obedience to the Supreme Court. The court, under Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, ruled that all ordinances promulgated by Musharraf after he imposed Emergency a second time to allow himself to remove the judiciary, had to be revalidated by Parliament through re-passage as laws. The NRO was one of them.
The NRO had raised a storm at the time of its promulgation, so it was virtually inevitable that it would create a controversy when it came to Parliament. It did, and the government, with allies publicly refusing to vote for it and even its own parliamentary party doubtful, decided not to table the ordinance.
This alone created an unfortunate situation for the president, placing him in much the same position as Musharraf before the second Emergency. Musharraf imposed it because it seemed a distinct possibility that the judiciary would rule him ‘unqualified’ to hold the office of president for a second term, after being elected by Parliament, as opposed to the first term, when he just took over by an amendment to the PCO. The removal of the judiciary, or rather its substitution, allowed him to obtain a judgement from the reconstituted Supreme Court that allowed him to continue for several months, and he only resigned on August 18, 2008 under threat of impeachment, on which the two major parties had agreed.