WRITING doesn’t come easy to those in public life in Pakistan — few politicians bother to record their experiences and memories. As a result, when a memoir does appear, it passes without notice.
This has been true of Farhatullah Babar’s book The Zardari Presidency (2008-2013); Now It Must Be Told, which recently hit the market, and passed almost unnoticed in the chaos of the India-Pakistan conflict. Or perhaps the lack of attention it got is simply a sign of these times when controversial and political issues are discussed in private gatherings and not publicly.
As the title suggests, this is not a memoir of the author’s life but simply an account of his time as Asif Zardari’s spokesperson during the latter’s first presidency.
Though there is an effort to provide a background of sorts, the book begins abruptly in some ways after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. It provides more than a fly-on-the-wall account of the post-Musharraf years, when a weak PPP coalition government ruled the federation; in hindsight, civilians and politics had some space to operate in then even though it was not without constant challenges.
And yet, this is not a detailed account of those five years but a curated one; the book focuses on the bigger crises of the Zardari presidency that were rooted in Pakistan’s eternal civil-military imbalance. So the book takes the reader from Gen Musharraf’s impeachment to the 2009 ‘long march’ to Memogate to Raymond Davis, with a mostly unmemorable detour on foreign policy.
Those looking to find material on the PPP’s internal wrangling or a takedown of Zardari, whose sobriquet, ‘the accidental president’ is discussed by the author, will perhaps not find much.
Neither does it discuss the party’s rule in Sindh or the journey of its political irrelevance in other parts of the country. This is simply an account of the major crises of the PPP tenure, which emerged from a “basic contradiction”. As a result, the bulk deals with Musharraf’s impeachment, the 2009 long march; Raymond Davis and Memogate.
There is little about the 18th Amendment, or the rocky relationship with the MQM; nothing about the ‘revolt’ of Zulfikar Mirza; and the relationship with the PML-N is discussed only in the context of the events described above. In fact, it could be said that the imposition of governor’s rule in Punjab is also glossed over as is Zardari’s reluctance to restore Iftikhar Chaudhry. To simply argue that the former chief justice was untrustworthy is no different from the establishment’s similar pronouncements about politicians.
But in the accounts provided, the book shines, for it manages to provide rich details on events already reported in detail in books, newspaper articles and drawing room chatter.
For instance, the military’s heavy presence at the presidency when Babar arrives for a late-night meeting as the lawyers’ march was headed to Islamabad is fascinating and familiar. Those who have witnessed politics in Pakistan are aware of the impact of these moments; a visible or heavier presence of troops, the sudden appearance of prisoner vans, are all quiet signals for those struggling to hold on to elected power.
The book provides a larger arc of the transition in the leadership style of Zardari.
The next chapter discloses that inside the presidency, only 13 of the 22 invited ‘associates’ had turned up for the meeting. Babar, in a way, sets the scene for the capitulation to follow; aware of the end, the reader can sense the space closing in on the president.
Similar is the detailed account of Memogate when the president had a breakdown of sorts and was rushed to Dubai. From the description of his behaviour to the cast of characters and the back and forth with the military, the book is unputdownable.
For instance, Malik Riaz is a constant presence there, conveying the message to the PPP that if Husain Haqqani left with the president, the helicopter would not be allowed to leave Pakistani airspace. (The messenger of yore is now persona non grata.)
Equally fascinating is the behind-the-scenes interaction between the military and PPP, with the army chief offering the president to have his checkup at the CMH, while in public, the two sides were at loggerheads over Memogate.
Other than these detailed accounts of major events, the last section offers brief accounts of the scuttling of the Fata reform package and vignettes on later events such as the formation of the BAP, the election of Sadiq Sanjrani to the Senate chairmanship and other such events. It is here that the bias becomes more evident — for where questions are raised about the backing provided to the PTI and the support enjoyed by BAP and Sanjrani, there is less scepticism about why Zardari does what he does, such as supporting Sanjrani.
Between the details of earlier sections and shorter chapters, the book provides a larger arc of the transition in the leadership style of Zardari, who begins his political career and presidency in a consultative manner, holding meetings with party colleagues. But by the end, he appears as someone who is taking decisions almost single-handedly, without giving any explanation even to his son.
This creeping change is most evident in the end chapters, which appear to be hurriedly written and poorly edited because there is repetition as well as higgledy-piggledy placement. The author can do little but refer to the ‘accidental president’ who in the beginning, always referenced his late wife or father-in-law to explain decision-making as mystical. But this is not to say there is no criticism of this; it is there for those who read closely, for instance, in the description of a cartoon that appeared in a newspaper after the Senate election.
But, like the journalists of his time, Babar’s criticism is mostly indirect and gentle — for example, in a chapter on Zardari’s meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, he writes that Pakistani politicians have not learnt from her experience — “appeasement and bending over backwards in pursuit of reconciliation do not bring democracy any closer”. Will this advice, buried in an unassuming part of the book, be noticed? In these times, probably not.
The writer is a journalist.
Published in Dawn, June 3rd, 2025