Manipal, India — After Pervez Musharraf
himself, the individual who will be most nervous at the resignation of Pakistan’s
president is the Pakistan People’s Party co-chairman, Asif Ali Zardari. For it
was Musharraf – admittedly with repeated prodding from Condoleezza Rice – who
offered Benazir Bhutto's widower amnesty from the numerous corruption cases
against him in exchange for his party’s support to his presidency.
Zardari, for reasons unknown, declined to
take over as prime minister of Pakistan, putting forward a presumed yes-man,
Yousaf Raza Gillani, in March.
The new prime minister, a Shiite and a
Saraiki-Punjabi, lost less than a week in establishing direct links with the
real power center in Pakistan, the army. He made the unusual gesture of
personally calling on the chiefs of both the Inter-Services Intelligence and
the army. Today it is to Gillani, rather than to Zardari, that military chief
Ashfaq Kiyani turns on the infrequent occasions when he wishes to consult the
civilian authority. As for the ISI, that instrument of jihad continues to
function under army headquarters.
Although he owes his job to Zardari, it is
unlikely that Prime Minister Gillani will do more than offer a token resistance
to the reinstatement of those judges sacked by Musharraf last year, including
the Zardari-phobic former chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhury.
