The transfer of all omnipotent constitutional powers from the president to Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani has made no dent in the unique decisive political role of Asif Ali Zardari in the present dispensation. Key leaders of two major political parties including the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People's Party (PPP) agree that even a constitutionally all-powerful prime minister is completely dependent on the sweet will and whims of the president simply because Zardari has a firm grip on the party and is thus in a dictating position. However, the PPP endorses this role of Zardari while the PML-N disapproves it saying that it amounts to ridiculing the Constitution. PPP Information Secretary Fauzia Wahab said that the high profile political role the president was playing was absolutely correct. She agreed that Zardari possessed the political authority while the prime minister has constitutional power. A prominent PML-N leader, who is the voice of the Sharif brothers, said on condition of anonymity that there was no doubt that the exercise of political power by the president was not only unfair and odd but also impermissible under the Constitution. He said it was not less than a joke that the president of Pakistan, who represents the unity of the Federation, was going around addressing political rallies and holding party meetings at the presidency. However, Fauzia Wahab said that nowhere in the Constitution has the president been barred from conducting political activities. She said his recent visits to Bahawalpur and Peshawar were intended to mobilize the PPP and he would continue such activities in future as well. For quite some time, a band of senior PPP leaders including the prime minister, federal ministers and other confidants of the president bunched together in what is called ‘core group', which has emerged as a ‘government within the government' gives guidelines to Gilani for implementation, which are promptly executed. This forum has emerged as the dominant political arm of the president, which frequently meets at the Aiwan-e-Sadr. “President Zardari relies on the wisdom of the members of the core group which holds frank discussion on crucial matters,” Ms Wahab said. Insiders say that the core group has rendered the PPP's Central Executive Committee quite redundant because this highest decision making PPP body does not meet too frequently. “It is not possible to maintain secrecy of the deliberations that take place in the proceedings of the CEC,” one of them said adding that this was a large body. Moments after a meeting of the core group in the wake of the release of the report of the UN Commission of Inquiry into assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the prime minister sidelined six police and administration officials, who were posted in Rawalpindi on Dec. 27, 2007. Again, it was after its another session that the prime minister, shortly after coming out of it, constituted a three-member fact finding committee headed by Cabinet Secretary Rauf Chaudhry to question Maj. Gen. Nadeem Ijaz and others about the hosing down of the crime scene. So it is the core group headed by President Zardari that keeps setting the agenda for the prime minister. Ms Wahab said in both cases the core group requested the prime minister to act in the light of the UN report. There was nothing wrong in it, she said. “We have a political government and consultations like those of the core group should not be considered unusual,” she said.
