The past week has witnessed Pakistan once again thrown into a state of commotion following President Asif Ali Zardari's sudden departure for Dubai, ostensibly for treatment of a potentially serious medical condition. While accounts of his illness ranged from a cardiac ailment to a stroke, the latest reports suggest that Pakistan's head of state is in recovery mode and hopes to return home soon.
Once Zardari returns, questions surrounding his health will continue to make the rounds as they must in looking at any public figure on the face of this earth. Yet, a serious dimension of this entire episode could well have been avoided in the best tradition of democracy.
Unlike countries which remain totalitarian in terms of their politics, Pakistan has successfully embarked on a democratic route and lives in the hope of coming at par with its neighbouring democracies in south and south-east Asia. It is a country where institutions and not people ought to make a difference. Yet, Pakistan still has much of a gap to fill in rising to the occasion and becoming a truly democratic state.
Zardari, more than others in the ruling structure, has chosen to surround himself with a heavy concentration of authority — a choice that works only to undermine the best tradition of a democracy and shared decision making. He remains not only the president but co-leader of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) — a controversial choice. Though he has successfully shed off some of the presidential powers, notably the authority to dismiss parliaments and elected governments, Zardari's clout is exercised more through his dominance of the PPP — a role that he inherited after the December 2007 assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto.
Setbacks
In the three years since Zardari became President following the election of a PPP-led ruling coalition, Pakistan has suffered in other ways too. The most significant among the setbacks to the country's prospects has indeed been a failure to lay the course for improving the lives of ordinary Pakistanis. While this has clearly not been achieved, thanks to Pakistan's collapsing economy, official slogans defending the country's democracy have only become hollow with the passage of time.
Moreover, Pakistan's security interests in more ways than one have been badly compromised. In addition to the growing economic malaise which increasingly threatens Pakistan's future prospects, the country's political disarray has only become the root of a growing challenge.
Under Zardari's watch, a periodic cobbling together of the ruling structure, simply to keep the top elite in place has done more harm than good.
Across the streets of Pakistan, many lament the PPP's alignment with stranger than expected political bedfellows.
The most telling such case was the decision to team up with the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-e-Azam (PML-Q), once lamented by the PPP's own leaders, on the basis of some PML-Q leaders having been allegedly responsible for Bhutto's assassination.
Last but not the least has been a visible erosion of the public's confidence in the government's willingness to ensure the rule of law. Prominent cases such as the refusal to comply with an order by the Supreme Court for Pakistan's top anti-corruption body to approach the Swiss authorities to reopen past cases of corruption against Zardari, remains a prominent example of this failure.
Once Zardari recovers from his ailment and returns, questions surrounding his physical health will inevitably haunt him. In reality there are also many questions about the health of the ruling structure. Clearly, Pakistanis have a right to ask their leaders to live by the best traditions of democracy — not just in name but in spirit.
Worst challenges
If Zardari and others such as Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani continue to defy their critics, Pakistan will remain stuck in its present position. This, as the country continues to be surrounded by some of the worst challenges in its 64-year history. Zardari's unexpected illness may have placed the spotlight squarely on his own wellbeing. Yet, what is truly at stake is the wellbeing of the country he rules in the name of democracy, where the ruling political structure still needs to rise to meet the aspirations of its people.
Farhan Bokhari is a Pakistan-based commentator who writes on political and economic matters.
