The Speech

After President Obama’s policy speech at West Point the speech that Pakistanis were most looking forward to was their own Presidents’ speech at Garhi Khuda Buksh—the ancestral home of the Bhutto family. Contrary to expectations the Presidents’ speech was neither a eulogy for Benazir Bhutto nor was it about Pakistan and its many problems. It was about the President and the Party that he took over after the murder of his wife—Benazir Bhutto. It was also about Pakistan’s internal politics.

The President spoke of the threats that he faced and the ‘crimes’ attributed to him that spawned those threats---‘crimes’ that were actually his greatest successes for the country and its people. This was his way of explaining the disconnect between him and what he stood or and the ‘institutions and non-state actors’ and what they stood for. To some it seemed that he had brought a simmering confrontation out unto the open and in doing so had ended a vicious campaign against him and the government. By his reference to the destruction of institutions in Iraq and Afghanistan he debunked the belief that he was dependent on the US for survival. He linked his survival to democracy and his Party’s political power.

To be fair it must be admitted that the government run by President Zardari has significant achievements to its credit. After Benazir Bhutto’s assassination he set the tone for limiting violence and provincial animosity and ensured a smooth transition of the Party’s leadership. He acted to forge the Coalition that has endured and he himself came to the Presidential office through the electoral process. The Gilgit-Baltistan transition and the NFC inter provincial accord are successes that eluded all previous governments. He went to the IMF only after exhausting all other options and has managed the relationship with US, UK, China, the EU and the Muslim world reaching out to Afghanistan and India for threat reduction. He has set in motion a process of constitutional reform that may succeed and finally the ‘Friends of Democratic Pakistan’ was an idea with considerable potential. Probably what people wanted was course correction and not changes—correction that would ensure even more success without negative fall-out.

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