Zardari springs a surprise, again

By Kamran RehmatIslamabad

Ringing in the new: the choice of Raja Pervez Ashraf as PM has stunned Pakistan

Leader of the Opposition Nisar Ali Khan has long tried his hand at fruity sound bites but despite being colourful on occasions few have stuck in memory for their resonance.However, his take on the election of Raja Pervez Ashraf as the 17th prime minister of Pakistan will find a mention in the local lexicon of sarcasm.Using the much trumpeted slogan - Democracy is the best revenge - that the ruling Pakistan People’s Party has made all its own to describe its heroic triumphs over military dictatorship, Khan instead employed it to underscore Ashraf’s unfancied rise to the top. He said in picking Ashraf, President Asif Zardari had avenged the Pakistani nation.Admittedly, disbelief at the turnaround is widespread. Ashraf remains one of the most controversial figures in the party, not in the least for his bombast in 2009, when he claimed he would rid the country of power load-shedding by December of that year. Three years on, Pakistan is facing the worst energy crisis of its more than six-decade history that threatens to nix the chances of PPP’s re-election in the near future. Ashraf’s claims prompted his recently disqualified predecessor and then-prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to publicly wheedle him not to give timelines.The unfulfilled promise apart, he was indicted by the Supreme Court only last March for pursuing a controversial Rental Power Plant (RPP) project that cost Pakistan a fortune and was still unhelpful in any meaningful way to address the issue.It earned him the now infamous sobriquet of ‘Raja Rental’, which continues to reverberate - a recent example of which was the lead display in Dawn, Pakistan’s widely respected and pronouncedly sober English broadsheet, going along with the description to underpin his election to the top office! The apex court in its 90-page verdict declared all the RPP deals “non-transparent, illegal and void ab initio”. The court also directed the National Accountability Bureau to proceed against all government functionaries involved in the scam, including the ministers for water and power during whose tenure the RPPs were approved or set up. Ashraf, 61, who remained minister for nearly three years, was one of them during the period under review. He was subsequently, interrogated for three hours at the Accountability Bureau for his alleged role in the deal only two months ago. Earlier, his fellow minister Faisal Saleh Hayat stunned the PPP government by going to the Supreme Court with purported evidence of Ashraf’s involvement in the controversial deal. This even prompted legal action from him, and amid much rancour, Ashraf lost his job.But it wasn’t long before Ashraf was rewarded - something of a pattern in the PPP lately -and given the portfolio of information and technology, clearly not one of his forte. Against this backdrop, the intriguing choice of Ashraf as prime minister has raised many eyebrows. Few in Pakistan, at this point in time, have been able to resolve the jigsaw puzzle except to agree that it is consistent with President Asif Zardari’s mien to take his detractors by surprise and come up with a shrewd stimuli-response.However, the likely objective could be two-fold: that the PPP would continue to defy the Supreme Court’s order to write to the Swiss authorities to reopen corruption cases against the president - for which Yousaf Raza Gilani lost his job early this week - and; two, to have a pliant man ready to sacrifice the top office like his predecessor.The anticipation is that soon the apex court will ask the newly-elected PM to do what his predecessor chose not to. A hint in this direction was dropped by Ashraf himself last week in his maiden speech as prime minister on the floor of the House, when he said he was honoured to be chosen for the seat of “martyrs”  -  referring to the father-daughter duo of prime ministers, Zulfikar Ali and Benazir Bhutto, who were hanged and assassinated, respectively. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the first popularly elected prime minister, was a charismatic and dynamic figure with global appeal. He led a broken nation following the cessation of East Pakistan in 1971 with such inspiration and steel that Pakistan was not only back on its feet but had assumed a leadership role in the Islamic world.This, however, did not stop him from being ousted in a military coup by his handpicked chief of the army and subsequently, put on a trial for the assassination of a political opponent on disputed charges of involvement.The controversial trial -  led by a judge with known visceral hate for Bhutto and riddled with irregularities - led to a death sentence by execution in 1979.Benazir Bhutto became at 36, the Muslim world’s first and youngest woman prime minister in 1988. She was referred to by some as the Antigone of Pakistan -  a character in Greek mythology who avenges the family honour -  for taking on and eventually succeeding against General Ziaul Haq, the man who dethroned her father.In 2007, she was also instrumental in paving the way for the ouster of General Pervez  Musharraf, when she negotiated a deal which forced him to give up his army chief’s role -  the fulcrum of all power -  in exchange for another presidential stint.However, she was assassinated minutes after her last public meeting before the scheduled elections under Musharraf’s watch, which he is accused of indirectly orchestrating by allegedly compromising her security. Back to the latest PPP prime minister. Unmissable was the import of President Zardari’s brief address after the swearing-in ceremony where he took a swipe at “detractors of democracy” -  a less-than-oblique reference to the superior judiciary -  before generously, eulogising the “honourable” Yousaf Raza Gilani for “protecting the supremacy of parliament and upholding the constitution”. The just ousted PM was in attendance as the president emphaticallysaid history was the “ultimate court” and it will remember Gilani for his sacrifices. Everyone rose from their seats to give the former premier a standing ovation. However, the vexing question still remains: why pick the much despised Ashraf? The jury is still out on whether this is another one in a series of masterstrokes from President Zardari - the prevailing view is that it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy to earn “martyrdom” ahead of the forthcoming elections for which the party has little to sell otherwise.l The writer is a freelance journalist based in Islamabad and can be reached at kaamyabi@gmail.com