Amin Fahim: Always the Bridesmaid...

Asif Ali Zardari-Bhutto has declared that he is the only person fit to lead the PPP and become the Prime Minister of Pakistan.

In today's DAWN, Anwar Iqbal reports that:

Pakistan People’s Party co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari has indicated that he may be the next prime minister if the Feb 18 elections bring the party to power.

In an interview to Newsweek, Mr Zardari based his claim to the country’s highest office to Benazir Bhutto’s will who, he said, clearly named him as her successor.“There is not one single personality [in the party], apart from me, who anybody even knows,” said Mr Zardari while explaining why he thought he should be the prime minister. “No one else has a consensus.”

Setting aside the ludicrousness of his will-based claim, I just wonder what Nisar Khuro, Raza Rabbani and Aftab Shaban Mirani have to say about the above statement.

And lets not forget Makhdoom Amin Fahim, Benzir's trusted lieutenant who was instrumental in restructuing the PPP in a manner that would give Benazir complete control; control that was in large parts implement by her through him. Amin Fahim is immensely respected within the PPP and has tremendous 'street cred'. His father was Talib ul Maulah, the famous Pir of Halla who was revered throughout Sindh and looked upon as a spiritual, moral and, ultimately, political 'guide' (imagine a more important Pir Pagara).

Its ludicrous for Zardari-Bhutto to assume that the consensus, if there is one, regarding his leadership will last. I imagine that he knows this and is using his current position to strengthen his political footing. This is going to be a hard task for him, considering his past differences with important members of the PPP elite. One notable incident that I recall involves Ali Nawaz Shah, landlord and party stalwart from Mirpurkhas and one of Benazir's closest confidant, who famously banned the entry of Zardari into his house and informed Benazir, who would pay frequent visits to seek advise, that she was only allowed into his house sans Zardari. (That she continued to visit him must've really pissed Zardari off!)

Another point to note is that Mr. Zardari-Bhutto is not even on the ticket for the up-coming elections. So for him to become the Prime Minister he would have to pull a Shaukat Aziz (have an elected MNA resign, contest the by-election, get elected to the National Assembly, have the recently nominated PM (Amin Fahim?) resign and then himself get nominated as the PM). And all of this can only happen if a PPP led coalition gets a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly!

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In another DAWN Article, Amir Mateen asks the following questions:

"Will the PPP survive [Benazir's] absence? How will the second tier of PPP react to Asif’s ascension in the long run? Will party maintain its national character? Is there a possibility of a merger with Ghanwa Bhutto? How and when will the next generation of Bhuttos-Bilawal, Fatima and Zulfikar enter the arena? How will the provincial wings of the party react to the new realities? How will Amin Fahim and the rest of the Sindhi leadership behave? What will be Aitzaz Ahsan’s role? Who will join which group in the new power play? The fundamental question remains that how will Asif Zardari carry Benazir’s legacy."


And concurs with Zardari's assesment by stating that:

"the best person suited to keep the party together at this stage is Asif Zardari. Amin Fahim, Aitzaz Ahsan, Aftab Shabaan Mirani, nobody could have done it better than Asif. Like it or not, as said by Safdar Abbasi in a recent visit to Naudero, it had to be a Sindhi and from the Bhutto family."


He also gives us a fascinating insight into the whirlwind world of Zardari-Bhutto:

"The new Ceaser, like in most political parties, was surrounded by courtiers, each one of them vying for a pound of flesh. The journalist team, of which I was a member, missed the flight to Sukkur because the ‘Saiths’ of Karachi, the wheeler-dealer kind, got us offloaded. Everybody wanted to be in Larkana. We found some of them still waiting outside Asif’s room when we landed in Naudero after a rough bus ride of 12 hours. Also present were the Mafioso types who shared jail days with Asif. Now, what should he do? If he sees them we get a juicy story. If he does not, that’s not Asif the ‘Yaron ka yar’.

"For us, the fellow penpushers, Farhatullah Babar and Sherry Rehman, were good enough. But there was an extra troika of media maidens competing with each other for the ears of the Ceaser. One of them, wife of a one-time Bhutto-hater, has had a shouting match with another competitor. She is now quite close to the PPP power centre. Quite a comeback for a man who remains in self-exile in the USA, especially after his spilling, at one stage, all the PPP beans that he had at his disposal to become part of the Musharraf regime."