Belated decision by Zardari to enter parliament

ISLAMABAD: Former President Asif Ali Zardari’s declaration to get himself and his son Bilawal elected to the present National Assembly from two Sindh seats exhibited his preference for the parliamentary democracy and to work within the system rather than disruptive street politics.

He has taken a belated decision as this National Assembly has just only seventeen months left to pass before the next parliamentary polls. This period, which is considered as the election campaign time, is obviously more important for politics outside of the parliament rather than inside it.

While Zardari’s address to Benazir Bhutto’s death anniversary congregation was quite strong against the Nawaz Sharif government, Bilawal’s speech was very harsh, and at one point he led an uncharitable slogan against the prime minister.

However, there was no announcement to launch a long march about which Bilawal had been talking about over the past few weeks in the wake of non-acceptance of his four demands. The young man confined himself to saying that he would prepare for the march by touring every nook and corner of Pakistan with the objective of overthrowing “Takht-e-Jati Umra”. But he gave no timeframe for the protest.

Zardari will become a unique former president after Farooq Leghari, who will land in the National Assembly after serving as the head of state. There is no legal or constitutional bar on an ex-president to contest a national or provincial seat, but generally such high ex-office holders avoid parliamentary politics this way.

Zardari took on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, but vowed to do politics to give a very tough time to him inside the parliament. His ultimate objective is to revive the lost glory of the PPP, but it is anybody’s guess how his and his son’s sure election to the National Assembly will help achieve this goal.

However, being a political heavyweight his presence on the parliamentary horizon will rejuvenate the PPP only in the parliamentary politics. He will try to exert pressure on the government to loosen the net around some of his close friends and party leaders, who are facing criminal and corruption cases.

But his boasting and belief to be a political sage, statesman, mentor and patron of Nawaz Sharif hardly sounded convincing. In this connection his assertion that he has handed over ‘politics’ to him as a ‘trust’ appeared freak because the prime minister had won the 2008 general elections on the force of his popularity and not due to any charity, largesse or favour of Zardari.

 Had the former president been in a position to lead any political party to victory in the previous polls, it would certainly have been the PPP and not the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

Another contention of Zardari that the premier is unable to ‘comprehend’ the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was beyond understanding as the present government has put in unprecedented hard work and has been successful to translate this giant project into reality while whatever the PPP regime did was limited to concept stages and paper work. No government would have done the swiftest work on the CPEC as the incumbent has done in reality.

It is beyond comprehension how true is Zardari’s assertion that “Nawaz Sharif has messed up my democracy”. Only PPP chief can answer how can Zardari claim “ownership” of democracy? He accused the premier of use of police and state machinery against the PPP, but this is untrue considering the ground realities. In Sindh Rangers are proceeding against suspects belonging to different political parties including the PPP while the federal government did not have much say in this drive.

Zardari opposed giving the power of nomination of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) chairman to the judiciary, but stated that even if this mode was adopted, the vetting of this appointment would have to be done by the parliament, recalling his government’s bitter experience with Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry when he was the chief justice of Pakistan.

The focus of attack of the father and son in different tones was on the federal government. None of them even slightly touched the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which devoured, according to the popular belief, the PPP’s vote-bank in the 2008 general elections. It was not the PML-N, which dented the popularity of the PPP.

Their attention on the PML-N demonstrated that they still treat it as its main political challenger and do not take the PTI as a principal threat. Or maybe, they wanted to be soft on the PTI so that the road to a future cooperation with it is not blocked because of their criticism of it.