On Saturday, a group of less than 500 politicians annointed Asif Ali Zardari as the next president of Pakistan. It was less the victory of democracy, and more that of small-minded elites.

These politicians have bandwagoned around Zardari — a man bankrupt of achievement, aptitude, moral rectitude, and public esteem, blamed by many for the downfall of his wife’s political career during the 1990s, effectively separated/estranged from her and indifferent to politics a year and a half back and now the inheritor of her checkered legacy.

They have lavished Zardari with undeserved platitudes and legitimacy.

They say, Zardari is a symbol of the federation. If he is, he indicates that it is corrupted and ignorant of its own best interests.

They say, Zardari and his party have a mandate; it is the majority party. Not true. The PPP has a majority only in Sindh — not in the center and not in the other provinces. In reality, no party has a national mandate. Hence the presence of coalition governments across the board and hence the logic of a non-partisan, non-controversial president.

Most likely, these politicians will ride Zardari to the mountain top and, once his political apex has been reached, push him down the other side. That is the story of Pakistani politics. But, in attaching themselves to such a controversial and erratic figure, they risk delegitimizing themselves. After all, this is the PPP — the Pakistan Pirs Party or the Populist Patrimonial Party, I would say — a cult that unites liberal, feudal, and serf in an awkward union.  In cults, there are no checks and balances.

And in a sign of the increasing personalization of things, i.e. Zardarization or the development of a cult of Zardari, the Sindh government initially announced that Monday would be a holiday to commemorate Zardari’s election. This was later rescinded by Zardari. How magnanimous. The PPP-led government of Sindh has put paid advertisements on private television channels congratulating Zardari on his election, displaying the PPP flag and previous leaders, and thanking the other political parties that voted for him. These were clearly PPP advertisements paid for with public funds.

Political power has been concentrated in the hands of a single man — the head of a party without a national majority.

Zardari is the president, head of the largest party, controls a puppet prime minister, and has a pliant supreme court. His personal defense lawyer is the law minister. His best friend’s wife is the speaker of the National Assembly. Another close associate is head of the Intelligence Bureau.  Personal friends have been and will continue to be posted in other critical positions across the country.  A nepotocracy, if you will.

The big question is: will Zardari reduce presidential powers to their original, nominal level?  That he says that he will does not make it guaranteed.  Remember, Amin Fahim was to be prime minister.  Remember, all judges were to be restored by an executive order (according to three separate agreements).  

Based on this year’s experience, Zardari will make promises and will have plenty of excuses to explain why he cannot fulfill them.  He will ‘try.’  He will move forward, back, and even sideways.  Often, he will admit that he simply lied.  Who cares?  Like He-Man, he has the power. And in the end, these powers are likely to stay.  

A possible strategy for Zardari is to initiate the process of reducing presidential powers, but tack on a host of other controversial issues in a massive amendment.  This would produce a drawn out process that in the end yields little change and has Zardari defeating his opponents by attrition.  Or, there will all of a sudden be a rising chorus of jiyalas and lifafa journalists who will call on Zardari to not reduce his powers.  Zardari will say, “My party has asked me to retain these powers.  The exigencies of today call for a powerful president.”

In a sense, little has changed since the departure of Musharraf.  Pakistan has gone from Mush to Much (mustache).  A one stop shop for foreign countries still exists to an extent, though Zardari does not and will never control the army and ISI.  But Zardari has the same powers as Musharraf and continues much of the same policies.  Though the election of a new president does not mean there is a new government, pundits writing advice to Zardari in the newspapers implicitly acknowledge that he is the de-facto head of government.  They speak of the policies he must pursue and the changes he must make.  Mr. Gilani has disappeared.  It is as if the assassination attempt on him was successful.  And it’s an indirect endorsement of the presidential system.

Additionally, there has been a recycling of characters from the Musharraf era: Mian Manzoor Wattoo, Salmaan Taseer, Hamid Nasir Chatta, Hina Rabbani Khar, Mahmoud Ali Durrani, and Abida Hussain (a sixteenth time turncoat). The governing coalition — consisting of the MQM (soon), JUI-F, and PML-Q liberals – is effectively the same as the last, except for the ANP.  [I consider the JUI-F as part of the last government.] 

All this and the breakup of the PPP-PML(N) coalition, the defeat of the lawyers’ movement, and consolidation of power in the hands of Zardari represents the culmination of efforts to sabatoge the mandate of February 18th.  

As Pakistan’s legislative assemblies elect the next president — likely to be Asif Zardari — moderate tremors struck northern Pakistan, including the capital, Islamabad, for the second consecutive day.

Earlier in the week, Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal described Zardari as “a Category 5 hurricane.”

The consensus apparently shared by God, the Journal, and a host of other papers is that Zardari is a natural disaster.

From today’s New York Times:

In April, Mr. Zardari told Ishaq Dar, the finance minister at the time and a member of Mr. Sharif’s party, which has since broken with Mr. Zardari, that he wanted the price the government paid farmers for wheat to be raised substantially as a way of rewarding an important constituency in Punjab Province, the nation’s most populous, according to two participants in the discussion with Mr. Zardari. The government would then have to heavily subsidize the cost of wheat to the consumer.

When Mr. Dar asked Mr. Zardari how he thought the government would pay for the subsidy, Mr. Zardari replied, “Print the notes,” according to the two participants, a government official and an associate of Mr. Zardari’s. In an effort to solve the impasse over the subsidy, it was suggested that Mr. Zardari form a committee of experts.

“ ‘I am the expert,’ ” Mr. Zardari said, according to his associate.

That was news to me.  Audacaious and maddening, but not surprising.  I’ll just make myself forget it by repeating, “roti, kapra, makan.“

But this below wasn’t news to me, nor to most observers of/in Pakistan:

“The two officials described another episode in May as the budget was being prepared. Mr. Zardari decided to scrap a proposed capital gains tax after a visit from a group of influential stockbrokers from the Karachi stock exchange, they said. The revenue from the capital gains tax, and from an income tax proposal on the rich, would have paid for an income support program for the poorest Pakistanis, they said. More than half of Pakistanis live on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank.”

In mid-June, The News, a leading Pakistani English-language daily reported a claim that Zardari was visited in Islamabad by an unidentified person who arrived on a chartered plane (not an alien, but probably a leading banker) who was decisive in the reversal. Note that the person allegedly visited neither the finance minister, nor the prime minister, but the unelected (and many times indicted) “co”-head of a political party (or, more technically, an association of liberals, feudals, serfs, and others who share lineage/linkage/bondage to a set of charismatic figures and/or distributors of patronage).  Anyway — that’s democracy?  Well, maybe it’s just politics — sans rules and morays.

An official at Pakistan’s largest foreign exchange firm described the coalition’s breakup — and Dar’s departure — as “a welcomed move.”  He said, it “improved sentiments in the financial markets as both [Shaukat] Tarin and Naveed [Qamar] are very pro-market.”

Pro-market?  More accurate would be pro-mafia.  Very mature attitude.  So these spoiled brats are unwilling to cooperate with a minimally redistributative mechanism in their deeply poor society but American taxpayers are expected to dish out $1.5 billion/year to their country for developmental aid?  These guys are not the exception, but the rule.  I — and most of you readers — have paid more taxes than people such as Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari.

Trickle down in Pakistan means wealth trickling down from wealthy parents to their children.  More likely than a tax on capital gains is one on poor Pakistanis who have to sell their kidneys.  It’s a growth industry there.

And remember, Zardari heads a ‘social democratic’ party.  That’s how convoluted it is.

The election of Zardari, albeit constitutional and a political fait accompli, is like locking a nation of 165 million in a ship with a madman at helm and chucking the keys into the Arabian Sea.  Zardari can prove everyone wrong.  Pakistan, and indeed the world, needs him to.  But the odds are the Zardari of now differs little from the Zardari of yesterday.  Pakistan, in perhaps as early as six months, will be back to square one, with one of its best opportunities for structural reform and rebalancing — led by its two largest parties, checked by civil society and the media, and in concert with a supportive military — vanquished.

Asif Zardari has an op-ed in today’s Washington Post.  The piece is designed to allay Western fears over Zardari’s virtually guaranteed election to the presidency on Saturday.  Zardari — through the words of the fellow who penned the piece–seeks to present himself as a victim of Pakistan’s establishment.  

He describes the establishment as “an elite oligarchy, located exclusively in a region stretching between Lahore and Rawalpindi-Islamabad.”  

He adds: “The provinces of Sind, the Northwest Frontier (Pashtunkhwa) and Baluchistan, as well as all of rural Punjab, have often been excluded from governance.”  [Correction -- it should be Pakhtunkhwa.]

This laughable assertion is recycled from a September 2nd piece in The News written by Farahnaz Ispahani, the wife of Zardari’s chief advisor and Ambassador to the U.S. Husain Haqqani.  (Ahsan at Five Rupees also writes about this.)

In it, Ispahani writes:

“The federation will continue to come under strain if the voices of the smaller provinces are not heard and the Lahore-Pindi power corridor continues to insist on its monopoly over power.”

The Huffington Post published an article by Ispahani on September 3rd.  Here comes the chorus:

“Pakistan’s political history can best be understood as a struggle between democratic political forces from all parts of the country and an establishment belonging to the power corridor geographically located between Lahore and Rawalpindi-Islamabad.”

It is troubling that the PPP seems to be playing the ‘Punjabi domination’ card with John Q. Gora.  Moreover, the reference to Lahore seems to be a strong attempt to link Nawaz Sharif to Pakistan’s establishment.  He was once their baby, but became their bad guy in the 1990s.

Playing the ethnic card has no place in policymaking circles here in the United States.  The reality is that Zardari is part of that Pakistani oligarchy of which he writes, and — perhaps this is news to Zardari — most opinion shapers in the United States are well aware of his background.  He is no messiah, no angel — far from it.  From corruption to links with organized crime and murder, Zardari’s rap sheet is far longer than his list of political achivements.

The reality is that most Pakistanis live near or below the poverty line, while Zardari is a billionaire.  Pakistan — and more specifically, Pakistan’s state exchequer — has been good to him.  In contrast, he and his family have not been good to Pakistan and its people.  In this, the Bhutto-Zardari family differs little from the rest of Pakistan’s elite — civil, military, Punjabi, or non-Punjabi.  He just seems to be the worst caricature of this deletrious, rapacious lot.    

Go visit Larkana, the home of the Bhuttos.  You’ll never believe it’s the hometown of two prime ministers.  For all their wealth, political opportunities, and economic populism, the Bhuttos failed to deliver even minimally to their prime constituency.  Why?  Because they are feudal elites.  If they provide education to their indentured servants, do you think they’ll still have employees?  Who will tend to the land while the Bhuttos sip their brandy?  

Not only is Zardari part of Pakistan’s oligarghy, he cannot be cleanly disassociated from its establishment. His major ally against the Muslim League – Nawaz is Salmaan Taseer, an individual who was formerly active with the PPP, then became a businessman and very close to Pervez Musharraf and Pakistan’s establishment. There are other links and common objectives.

Above all, Zardari, Nawaz Sharif, and Pervez Musharraf and the rest of Pakistan’s civil-military elite share a miserable past that has produced Pakistan’s dangerous present and questionable future.  Zardari’s attempt to present himself as a savior belies the reality and the way most in Pakistan and even the United States see him.  Billionaire Zardari is part of Pakistan’s feuding oligarchy, not a revolutionary against it.  

The sad fact is that most Pakistanis have been hostage to this sadistic version of Bill Murray’s Groundhog’s Day for 60 years.  There will be no messiahs in Pakistan.   Pakistanis need the rule of law — neither Baitullah Mehsud’s law, nor Farooq Naik’s law — and a system with real checks, balances, and accountability to free them from their malaise.

The vehicle of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was reportedly attacked today by at least one gunman.  Two shots were fired and hit what seems to be the driver’s side of his vehicle.  It does not appear that the bullets penetrated the bullet-proof glass.  Gilani, who was en route to his residence from Islamabad airport, was unharmed.

Also, today U.S. forces entered Pakistani soil in a ground attack on Angor Ada, South Waziristan — a previous target of multiple Predator drone missile strikes.

Today’s raid was on the home of a local tribesman, Payo Jan Wazir.  According to a local resident, ten persons in the home were killed, including three women and two children.  An additional five civilians were killed.  Therefore, according to local reports, ten out of the fifteen killed were civilians.

BBC Urdu reports that 20 persons were killed in the attack.  The news service adds that, according to locals, the attacks from three gunship helicopters occured at approximately 3AM local time.  They state that Pakistani security forces are stationed only 300 meters (984 feet) away.

The raid was presumably launched to kill or apprehend a high-value target.  Another report suggests that U.S. forces were engaged in hot pursuit of militants that crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan.

Some reports claim that U.S. (and possibly Afghan) special forces operated on the ground as well.

Statements from the People’s Party (PPP) indicate that Asif Zardari has secured enough votes to win Saturday’s presidential election.  His party seems more focused now on cushioning his vote count so as to suggest he was a consensus candidate.

A Zardari presidency is not the worst thing for Pakistan.  But it’s certainly not the best.  Far from it.  If and once Zardari secures the presidency, he will effectively control that office and the premiership.  That’s far too much power for a party that hasn’t even secured a majority federally or in most other provinces, including Punjab, the largest.

Moreover, Zardari is an intellectual lightweight and thoroughly unprepared to deal with Pakistan’s major challenges.  A year and a half ago, he was estranged from his wife, living in a Central Park apartment, and spent his days loitering around or playing with his dog, Maximilian.  Now this underachiever–he meagerly passed through high school and did not attend college–will become president of the world’s sixth largest country.

There are far better candidates.  Perhaps a dozen more.  The only reason why Zardari is becoming president is because of the political realism of those who support him.  They recognize who’s boss.  It’s Zardari — by default.  But 60 years of Pakistan’s history demonstrate that sycophants and others ride the coattails of a rising potentate and–just as quickly–abandon him (or her) when the summit has been reached.  The fall is never graceful.  Pakistan absorbs most of the blows.

If the president were directly elected by the people, Zardari would lose handily.  If he is beloved by any, it is by default.  His wife was murdered; his son is a teenager.  There is, for the PPP base, no present alternative.  For Pakistan’s majority, Zardari is a plunderer, dim-witted, and deceitful.  If he is a “symbol of the federation,” as the president should be, then he is a symbol of the federation’s decay.

A Zardari presidency is not necessarily the end of the world for Pakistan.  If he falls victim to habit, it could be.  But it can be positive for Pakistan if Zardari submits to the constitution, restores his office to its nominal status, does not obstruct his opponents or the judiciary, and rises (as best he can) above partisanship.

It does not look good.  Zardari is pulling tricks from the old playbook.  Let’s hope it’s just political posturing.  If it’s not, Zardari should read a book or two.  In Pakistan, only generals get safe exits.