LAHORE: ‘Reconciliation’ was the agenda as President Asif Ali Zardari gave his first audience to senior journalists in the city at a meeting on Thursday. “I trust them even if they do not trust me,” he told the select gathering at the Governor’s House, in reference to the Sharifs of Lahore who have of late been again heard accusing the president of breaking his promises.
This was Mr Zardari’s first heart-to-heart with a collection of editors and senior journalists of Lahore. A visit he made to the city six months ago to call on Mian Nawaz Sharif passed off without the locally-based media heads finding an opportunity to examine him in person.
Consequently, the Thursday afternoon’s informal two-hour discussion threw up a variety of issues that have been raised ever since the Pakistan People’s Party government came to power in March 2008. But of course the session was kicked off with a mention of the present and what the immediate future may hold for the party and its leader.
“Given our history,” he said, “we cannot drop guard” against forces which could be out to destabilise the system and derail democracy. President Zardari’s emphasis was on saving the system and nurturing it to a point where an elected government felt secure. Was this the only justification for the PPP to stay in power?
If the assertion gave anyone the impression that he was trying to rule by default instead of governing by merit on the strength of a popular mandate, the president was quick to point out the difference in the two perceptions.
He listed many steps taken by the PPP government to establish its credentials as a party worthy of being in power. Among them, chiefly, were the PPP’s efforts in forming and keeping a coalition going in the country in extremely trying conditions, the announcement of a package for Balochistan and the crackdown on militancy in the northwest with the help of the army.
As the names of Haqqani Shura and Quetta Shura were thrown up by insistent media personnel desperate to rid the country of militants, the president enunciated the problems Pakistan is faced with in tackling extremism. But he declared: “We are against all kinds of extremism.”
Fiscal policies
Mr Zardari explained the official point of view on the current fiscal policies and said the fruits of these policies would come in due course. But while he was keen on recounting the government’s achievements, he resorted to the formula whenever the mediamen sought direct intervention from him to fast resolve an issue.
“I would have accepted your advice had you been an economist,” he said in his reply to a gentleman who pleaded with him to revise and fix the value of a dollar at Rs70. “There is a committee in the parliament you should engage… What we need is to evolve a system of dealing with these matters.”
The thorny Kalabagh drew a similar response from Mr Zardari. First he was not willing to heed the call for the dam’s construction since it wasn’t coming from an expert. Not even a suggestion that the dam could be named after Benazir could make him change his mind.
Nor could the grand promise that his assent to Kalabagh will send his popularity graph soaring. “I don’t do politics of the graphs,” he said before kind of declaring the matter closed with a reiteration of how the dam raised suspicions in both Sindh and the Pakhtoonkhwa.
The president was quite categorical in blaming a negative media for thwarting the government’s plan to feed rental megawatts to the badly-starved energy sector in the country. According to him, there was a misconception here about the price of rental power, and that the power-generation could not be improved since the negative signals from Pakistan scared the foreign investors away.
Mr Zardari’s first encounter with the senior members of the press corps in Lahore would have been incomplete without the participants reflecting on the sham trial that ended up in the hanging of PPP founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The president said after the present assembly came about his party had proposed that the parliament offer an apology for the judicial murder of ZAB.
“At the time we were even closer (to the Pakistan Muslim League-N leadership) than we are today and we said we could pass the resolution to apologise on (ZAB’s trial).” The resolution was never moved while another one on the assassination of Ms Benazir Bhutto was unanimously passed.
The PPP and PML-N, the coalition partners according to Mr Zardari, have come a little apart since. Was it then that the president was waiting for the two Sharif brothers to be away from Lahore before making this long-overdue trip here? Mr Zardari dispelled the impression that PML-N chief Mian Nawaz Sharif and Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had timed their foreign tours to avoid him in the Punjab metropolis.
“They must have planned their visits well in advance” — considering that Mian Nawaz Sharif had to consult doctors in China and Mian Shahbaz Sharif was to call on top-level leadership in Turkey.
In any case, provided his guard helps him to remain in office, the Sharifs will be hard pressed not to cross path with President Zardari in Lahore in the days and months to come. After a prolonged confinement in the presidency in Islamabad, Mr Zardari says he now plans to spend a week in the Punjab capital every month. For starters, his present stay may extend to ten days and beyond.
On the evidence of this one meeting alone, a president committed to reconciliation – some may call one compelled to be on the defensive – hardly appears to pose any danger to the PML-N leadership whenever the two sides meet next.
When Mr Zardari was asked to comment on the differences between the PPP and PML-N over a share in the Punjab cabinet, his answer was anything but a demanding one. He chose to speak on how the size of the cabinet was an issue to be pondered over both at the provincial and federal levels.
The demands, as has been the case all through Mr Asif Ali Zardari’s term in presidency, will come from the other side. Currently, the PML-N is pursuing the repeal of the 17th Amendment and the president assured his audience on Thursday he had repeatedly asked the parliamentary committee for constitutional reform to expedite matters. “They are 65 per cent of the way through,” he said.
