Zardari has an onerous task

Having graduated from the ranks of a businessman to the highest office in his country, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari will be the beneficiary of a constitutional change initiated by his predecessor Pervez Musharraf.

This adjustment, thereby altering a president's powers, gives Zardari a wider playing field: the ability to dissolve assemblies; appoint heads of the country's armed forces; judges and governors. The additional brief of being in charge of his country's nuclear capabilities - Pakistan is the only Islamic nuclear state - adds more gravitas to his position. But Zardari has got a unique opportunity to be judged again: not by his past, but by how he governs Pakistan in the present. With his country in economic turmoil and facing intense political instability the new president will be pressed to strike the right balance. While ensuring that the engines that run the democratic process are running smoothly, Zardari will also have to maintain cordial terms with the military and an exacting opposition.

Pakistan cannot afford any more ill-timed detours on its way to a state of durability. And it is precisely while achieving this status that Zardari's political acumen will be put to a stringent test.