Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has boxed himself in and is now trying to get out. So obvious is this that it’s no more news. The big question now is whether he will be able to do a Houdini.

Post-Benazir Bhutto’s death, Zardari got into the driver’s seat and despite scepticism over his past, there was a general sense within the party as also across the political spectrum that the Pakistan People’s Party needed the Bhutto connection. Zardari also pulled in his son and became co-chair of the party to provide just that magic connection.

He also showed himself, initially, to be eager to make amends with other political actors and to effect compromises. He got into agreements with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, the PPP’s arch-rival, and also other, more parochial political entities.

The beginning, despite reservations, looked promising. But then he began putting a new definition on politics being the art of the possible. He misjudged the national mood on the judges’ restoration; miscalculated the PMLN’s resolve to stick to its avowed policies of getting the judges restored, reviewing and amending the 17th amendment and the powers of the president under it; scrapping the national reconciliation ordinance which had given legal cover to the return to Pakistan of Benazir and Zardari himself.

The PMLN wanted a tabula rasa and a new script. Zardari wanted to edit, minimally, former General Musharraf’s script and retain most of what would help him become the president. If one is pressed to come up with one major mistake that Zardari has committed, it is this: his decision to elevate himself as president after getting political support of the PMLN to get rid of Musharraf. Every other miscalculation flows from there. Getting to the Presidency meant retaining much of Musharraf’s illegally constituted legal edifice. There are at least two theories about what he embarked on a series of miscalculations.

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