By Cyril Almeida

Year 1 was a helluva ride. Asif Zardari pulled off a political trifecta few could imagine: he won over a sceptical nation as a grieving widower with “Pakistan khappay”; he became political kingmaker; and he ascended to the perch from which Musharraf ruled and was so loath to give up.

What will year 2 bring? It may be tempting to assume that it will be extraordinarily unpredictable. But Zardari is no longer the puppet master hidden from view; now he’s front and centre and everyone is gunning for him.

So some guesses are in order. Start with conventional wisdom. Off the record or on the record, between the lines or straight shooting, political foes and friends alike agree that the Zardari system won’t last.

The problem is the policies, compounded by the style of government. The fate of his predecessor as president epitomises the problem Zardari has created for himself.

Whatever the democracy brigade may claim, Musharraf wasn’t chucked out because the people suddenly yearned for democracy; he was chucked out because he made a series of bad choices that lost him friends at home and abroad, and did so with such chutzpah that the people were left aghast. In 1999, Musharraf was the saviour with the right ideas; by 2008, his ideas were spent and their execution alienated the public. March 9, May 12, the bungled siege of Lal Masjid in July, Nov 3, the crowing before the February elections - the errors came thick and fast. And what the people giveth, the people can taketh away.

So it is with Zardari. Start with the style. A military dictator can hide from the people because he isn’t one of them - he’s bigger and better than them, which is why the people believe he can cleanse the polluted body politic. A political leader - and that too the inheritor of the populist legacy of ZAB and BB - simply cannot afford to be away from the people. Where aloofness raises the stature of the dictator, it eats away at the credibility of the political leader. Zardari and his supporters may vent about impatience and unfairness but they miss the point; they need a more visible leader. The no-show before a charged up base at Garhi Khuda Buksh was the latest damaging incident. The accidental president is in danger of becoming the invisible president, and in politics few miss what they can’t see.

Turn next to leadership. Having inherited the deeply unpopular economic and militancy-related choices of Musharraf, Zardari arguably had little room to manoeuvre. Defeating the militants is a long and messy and murky job. And fixing the economy in months was impossible given the double whammy of Musharraf’s profligacy and rocketing international commodity prices - and this before the financial meltdown.

But if the economy and militancy were sure to get worse before they got better, a shrewder politician would have understood the need to handle other areas better. Look at the Sharif brothers. In Punjab they are steering a government beset by many of the problems confronting the one in Islamabad. There’s a large cabinet, a dysfunctional coalition, little money, load-shedding, gas shortages, fuel shortages, dire inflation, unhappy farmers, dismayed businessmen, angry human rights activists, an antagonistic governor, unsettled bureaucrats - and yet the brothers come out on top in any poll.

The trick - and not in the wool-over-the-people’s-eyes way - is to focus on the possible. When the problems are big, pay attention to the small. Win over groups with gimmes. Fata is burning? Try and address the insurgency in Balochistan. Economy is tanking? At least appoint competent stewards and let them work on long-term institutional betterment. CJ Iftikhar won’t go away? Help the ordinary citizen get justice in the lower courts. Coalition is unwieldy and troublesome? Let parliament debate and argue until they drop - the people are used to bazaar politics and won’t mind. But scan Zardari’s governance record and there’s little evidence of such an understanding.

Worse, he has slammed the door in opportunity’s face when it has come knocking. Consider Mumbai. The one positive was that nobody, not even the Indians, believed the civilian government was involved. In the charged, overwrought atmosphere that was a once-in-a-lifetime moment. But instead of rising to the occasion and being a responsible, calm, credible interlocutor, the ISI-chief and hoax-call fiascos painted a picture of a bungling government seemingly determined to expose its every weakness.

So conventional wisdom has already written off Zardari, convinced he has neither substance nor style. The problem is that few bother to work through what it would take to remove him - and the consequences of doing so.

With all the chatter surrounding him, it is easy to forget that Zardari is actually in as secure a position as any politician can hope to be. He is a constitutionally powerful president who is entitled to stay in office until September 2013. There are no obvious ways to dislodge him.

Impeachment? Just last year we saw how effectively Musharraf was cornered by first using the provincial assemblies to express no confidence in him and then threatening to go all the way in parliament. But the numbers don’t add up for the opposition this time, neither in the provincial assemblies nor the parliament. And after the Senate elections in March, a two-thirds majority in parliament for anyone opposing the PPP co-chair will become an even more distant possibility.

The Kakar solution? Getting the army chief to counsel the president to step down has been done before, but until Kayani retires in another two years it would mean winning the ear of an army chief who has tried to move away from political intrigue.

A coup? That’s an X factor that can never be ruled out in Pakistan. Could Kayani be a general who eschews half measures and prefers the full monty? But that would leave Nawaz out in the cold, a dangerous foe who is nationally popular and hasn’t been sullied by a stint in government for a decade. The Bangladesh model, which is actually the Musharraf model between 1999 and 2002, could be used to win Nawaz over, but would be willing to take the word of a general having been betrayed so badly before?

There is another possibility, which also highlights the circularity of the problems of politicians. The PPP chairmanship is a poisoned chalice and Zardari is right to be taking his security so seriously - which is why he ducked the crowds in Garhi Khuda Buksh and stays away from public gatherings. Damned if he doesn’t; eliminated if he does - it’s an ugly choice that encapsulates the very worst of Pakistan’s bare-knuckles politics.

Whatever happens, the year 2 AZ is set up to be like many before in Pakistan’s history: a slow-motion train wreck with all of us on board, some cheering, others worrying, but with everyone losing.

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