He ain’t going nowhere!

Love him or hate him

Even if you are an unabashed critic of the man, you have to grant him one thing, even if grudgingly: Asif Zardari has been one really agonising thorn in many a side these last four years or so. Post-Benazir Bhutto, not many would have given the PPP and Asif Zardari, reverse the order if you want to, much of a chance of hanging on to power for as long as it and he has. Come to think of it, the party has already surpassed the PPP’s longest stint in office in the 1990s.

The extreme dislike, even hatred, that Zardari evokes in so many power centres – the establishment, the judiciary and the opposition combined, not to mention a very large part of the media – is almost visceral. Or so it seems.

It is moot whether the grin plastered across his face riles his opponents more or being outdone by him time after time. But in the last few years he has definitely infuriated people, by mostly being one up on them and fending off attacks with the facility of a born survivor.

With Memogate in full swing, the powers-that-be in fits, and the Supreme Court ordering the establishment of a commission (according to a newspaper report, called ‘a full blast judgment’ smacking of ‘unfairness’ by the ex-SCBA president Asma Jahangir) on Nawaz Sharif’s plea, the time it seemed was ripe to throw the target out of the saddle.

And when Asif Zardari boarded a flight to Dubai with reports of a heart attack and talk of a physical impairment in the air, the only two words that could have stirred up such emotion among his antagonists were ‘soft coup’. Foreign Policy magazine provided these, and the rumour mongers had the fodder. To them, the man they all loved to hate, was gone – hopefully for good.

There was talk of the strong-willed, almost stubborn-minded, Zardari no longer having the nerve to tackle the all-out, relentless and no-holds-barred onslaught from multiple fronts and had thrown in the towel. The circumstances just seemed right. Babar Awan’s press conference after the aforementioned Supreme Court decision, evoking the metaphor of martyrdom and the PPP’s willingness to embrace it yet again, also hinted that the decisive blow was nigh.

The elation was unalloyed and unconcealed, reflected in Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s demeanour on the box, as if power was coming to him on a platter at a brisk pace, and Ahsan Iqbal’s many tweets. A sampling: “180 million Pakistanis are praying for the heart fail of Mr Zardari’s government” and “Zardari’s government is a health risk for Pakistan”.

But after so many inspired forecasts by an army (pun not intended) of pundits – it indeed has been a non-stop litany of rumour-mongering and Zardari bashing from the day the PPP government stepped into office but to no avail – has he finally gone? The picture slowly emerging from Dubai suggests anything but that. He is keeping himself busy; between checkups, he’s meeting important people and taking calls – hardly the routine of someone who was about to cash in his chips, and promising a return home within the next few days. One will know shortly, and for sure, if his sojourn in Dubai is extended or not.

One thing though is as obvious as anything could be. Zardari is not without his faults, but a quitter he is not. Not by a long shot. He didn’t buckle under when in the 1990s one Nawaz Sharif goon in the guise of a police office threatened to slit his throat in a prison cell. He didn’t compromise during his long years of incarceration. And he has shown exceptional pugnacity since Benazir Bhutto’s tragic demise. To see the back of him, his opponents need to bury him. Nothing short of that would do.

The pressure brought to bear on Zardari, (“the noose around his neck”, to borrow from a quote in Foreign Policy), by powers-that-be may have weighed heavily on his mind. And after all he does have a history of cardiac issues. And he may have wanted medical advice that he could trust. But in all probability this might have been a sort of tactical retreat – just to withdraw from the fray, to assess, regroup, weigh options and come back recharged with the counter punch, to continue his tilt at the presidency. And what nicer place for a cool R&R than the safe and familiar environs of the VVIP wing at Dubai’s American Hospital?

Take a dispassionate look at the situation. Zardari’s opponents may deceive themselves that the deck is now stacked against him, that things are coming to a head with the oppositions now gelling well with the judiciary, and the security establishment having cause to be furious at its undercutting exposed through Memogate. To them, this might be the time to go for the jugular. That is why they were gunning for Zardari with such vengeance.

But from Zardari’s viewpoint, all is not lost, by no means. With his allies not ditching him, he still has the numbers on his side. That is why only ultra-constitutional means can chuck him out, and that is why the dubious tactic of a soft coup or a change foisted from within the PPP minus Zardari is being discussed as a possibility.

For Zardari, there is incentive enough in toughing it out and riding out this tempest. With only three months to go between now and March 2012, the PPP is virtually on the home run for the critical Senate elections. The current sound and fury is the last throw of the dice by the opposition – and if it doesn’t pan out as it wanted it to, after all its endeavours it would cut a sorry figure in the public mind, making Zardari’s stock soar.

Another factor that is supportive of Zardari is the situation in Afghanistan and the fact that the acrimony with the US that has put the army in a spot from where it could tamper with the current political dispensation only at the risk of further unsettling the domestic front. Not something that a halfway decent strategist in the vicinity of Rawalpindi would suggest.

It seemed to have happened eons ago, but the talk show host who accredits himself with so more investigative stories than everyone else put together, not just in this country but the entire universe, it would seem, in his frustration remarked with words to the effect, that “to evict Zardari from the president house you’ll have to send him packing in an ambulance”. In poor taste, and professionally pathetic, but not off the mark by much, you’d say.

The writer is Sports and Magazines Editor, Pakistan Today.