The president's slender chance

tauringhuang.

Sep 8th 2008
From Economist.com

Pakistan’s new leader, Asif Zardari, has a bad reputation and an historic opportunity

AFP
IT IS a wonder that any sane man would want the job. Pakistan faces economic meltdown, chronic political instability, a war with Islamist extremists and a row with America, its most important ally. An attack on the prime minister’s motorcade last week and a bombing in the north-west that killed at least 30 on Saturday September 6th were reminders that this is also an extremely dangerous job.

Yet, since the assassination of his wife Benazir Bhutto, a two-time former prime minister, last December, Asif Zardari has manoeuvred with skill and persistence to become Pakistan’s president. On Saturday, he achieved that aim, easily winning a majority in the electoral college, comprising the two houses of the federal parliament and the four provincial assemblies.

So tainted is Mr Zardari’s reputation by allegations of past corruption that his victory has been greeted by many with horror. But he is as well placed as anybody in Pakistan’s history to entrench civilian rule, which in the past has been merely a series of chaotic interludes in a succession of military dictatorships.

Mr Zardari’s friends say he is indeed sane, despite claims by his lawyers in a British court last year that his years in prison on a variety of charges including corruption and murder—on none of which he was ever convicted—had impaired his mental health. This, hint his friends, was all part of a now irrelevant legal game.

Even so, if Mr Zardari is not daunted by the task he has taken on, he should be. Internationally, it is the political crisis that grabs attention. But fixing the economy may be just as urgent. With annual inflation above 24%, reserves of foreign exchange dwindling fast and the Pakistani rupee cheaper against the dollar than it has ever been, the country risks a balance-of-payments crisis.

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This has not been helped by an article in the New York Times that casts doubt on Mr Zardari’s economic competence. It tells of a meeting where Mr Zardari gave orders to raise grain-procurement prices, to reward farmers, an important constituency. Asked how to finance the resultant subsidies to consumers, he is reported to have demanded: “print the notes”.

Nor has Mr Zardari’s response to the war in Pakistan’s tribal areas, bordering Afghanistan, been entirely reassuring to his American allies. They suspect that, since elections in February rang the death-knell for the regime of Pervez Musharraf, Mr Zardari’s predecessor as president, Pakistan’s government has bought relative peace at a cost to their own interests. NATO forces in Afghanistan report a sharp rise in cross-border terrorist attacks.

This has led to a serious row with America, after American forces based in Afghanistan attacked targets across the border in Pakistan last week, causing, says Pakistan, civilian deaths, which are naturally resented bitterly. This highlights the central dilemma facing any Pakistani government: internationally, it relies on American sympathy, support and financial aid. Yet America’s pursuit of the “war on terror” makes it deeply unpopular in Pakistan. It is almost impossible, as Mr Musharraf found, to be popular at home while maintaining the country’s most important alliance.

For this task, Mr Zardari—for all the baggage he brings with him—stands a better chance than any civilian for decades. He has inherited a presidency with powers boosted by various incumbents, most recently Mr Musharraf. Yet his party has also won an election, and the army, its image besmirched by the unpopularity of the Musharraf regime, seems to have little appetite for yet another coup.

So Mr Zardari has a rare opportunity not just to use a democratic mandate to take difficult decisions, but to bolster civilian rule itself. Sadly, little in his career thus far gives confidence that he has the acumen to take it.