Pakistan: Will Zardari become just another autocrat?

Pakistan’s new president has a unique opportunity to bring stability to a troubled nation, said Ayesha Tammy Haq in the Islamabad News. Just weeks after Pervez Musharraf stepped down, ending nearly a decade of military rule, Asif Ali Zardari, widower of slain Pakistan People’s Party leader Benazir Bhutto, now has complete control over the government. Zardari was elected president last week by a parliament in which his party controls both houses; it also controls all four provincial governments. This means that for all practical purposes, there is no opposition. Zardari, therefore, is “in a very strong position to do all that needs to be done” to repair the country’s ailing democracy and restore confidence in the government. For the moment, all the controversy about his past—his reputed penchant for embezzlement back in the days when his wife was prime minister and his alleged history of depression—is irrelevant. He is riding so high, he has “absolutely no excuse” not to fulfill all his campaign pledges.

Apparently, Zardari feels he needs no excuse, said Ghazi Salahuddin, also in the News. He has already backtracked on his most important promise, the pledge to reinstate all the judges that Musharraf fired. Zardari’s PPP came to power riding a wave of outrage over the judges’ dismissal. PPP leaders, including Zardari, were “in the forefront of the lawyers’ movement” and “valiantly campaigned for the cause of the sacked judiciary.” But now that Zardari holds all the power of the presidency, he seems to fear the judges for the same reason Musharraf did: because they will rule his presidential powers unconstitutional.

And that brings us to his second campaign promise, said Asif Haroon Raja in the Lahore Post. Before he was elected, Zardari said he would relinquish the extra presidential powers that Musharraf had accrued. Now, though, “it is quite likely” that he will retain those powers and “recommence one-man autocratic rule.” Wouldn’t that be “a cruel joke played upon the nation? It will be like out of the frying pan into the fire.”

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It’s too soon to make such accusations, said the Karachi Dawn in an editorial. Let’s give Zardari a chance to follow through with reforming the office of the president. Surely he knows that if he “fails to keep his word again, his credibility and democratic credentials will be in tatters.” The real test for Zardari, said the Peshawar Frontier Post, will be “how he conducts himself in his office.” The nation wants a leader who can revive the economy and stand up to Islamic militancy. Zardari “has to keep his cool, and, more important, not to provoke and not to get provoked.” All we can say is “good luck to him.”