The president himself, natty in a navy suit, his black hair brilliantined to a sheen, was the very picture of ease. Zardari beamed when we talked about New York, where he often lived between 2004, when he was released from prison after eight years, and late 2007, when he returned to Pakistan not long after his wife, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated by terrorists. For all that painful recent history, Zardari is a suave and charming man with a sly grin, and he gives the impression of thoroughly enjoying what must be among the world’s least desirable jobs. Zardari had just been through the most dangerous weeks of his six months in office. He dissolved the government in Punjab, Pakistan’s dominant state, and called out the police to stop the country’s lawyers and leading opposition party from holding a “long march” to demand the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who had been sacked, along with most of the high judiciary, by Zardari’s predecessor, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Zardari defused the situation only by allowing Chaudhry’s return to office and giving in to other demands that he had previously and repeatedly rejected.
Yet, despite this spectacular reversal, the president was not in a remotely penitent state of mind over his handling of the protests against him. “Whoever killed my wife was seeking the Balkanization of Pakistan,” he told me. “There is a view that I saved Pakistan then” — by calling for calm at a perilous moment — “and there is a view that by making this decision I saved Pakistan again.” There had been, he said, a very real threat of a terrorist attack on the marchers on their way to Islamabad. That is why his government invoked a statute dating back to the British raj in order to authorize the police to arrest protesters and prevent the march from forming. I pointed out that Benazir Bhutto faced a far more specific threat and was outraged when General Musharraf kept her from speaking on the pretext of protecting her. The president didn’t miss a beat. “And therefore,” he rejoined, “we moved to the other side”: that is, he reversed his order to the police, and permitted the protesters’ march, just before giving in to their demands altogether.
http://newageislam.com/can-pakistan-be-governed?--/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/1294
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