Pressure mounts on President to stop toeing US policies

ISLAMABAD Faced with diverse challenges, President Asif Ali Zardari is ostensibly left with no viable option that can help steer him and his PPP-led coalition out of troubled waters, TheNation reliably learnt on Tuesday.
Background discussions and interviews with numerous political players, political and security analysts have revealed that President Zardari would not be able to surmount the grave external and internal challenges that might eventually lead to his ouster from the power corridors. From now onward, President Zardari wont be in a position to generously pleas the US in advancing her agenda with regard to war on terror, security analysts predicted while referring to a letter to President Zardari by his US counterpart seeking to expand and speed up fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban.
They are of the view that US was seeking more military operations in other parts of Pakistan especially in North Waziristan and Balochistan, which they believed would not be doable proposition for President Zardari and his ruling party in the given internal situation.
The sources said it would be quite difficult for mainstream opposition parties as well as PPPs coalition partners to endorse plans envisaging new military operations particularly when armed forces of the country are already over-stretched with their preoccupation in various parts of FATA and Swat-Malakand.
In the wake of dismal performance of the PPP-led coalition government in rehabilitation and reconstruction works in Swat-Malakand and now South Waziristan, another source said adding that President Zardari was no more in a position to continue buying US plans for military operations in other parts of the country. As regards internal challenges, sources were not much inclined to the success of President Zardari s game plan of power-shedding saying PPP would not be able to muster required majority in the Parliament to implement the constitutional reforms envisaging repeal of 17th amendment etc.
They were of the view that the constitutional reforms being finalised by the parliamentary committee headed by Senator Raza Rabbani has already fallen prey to disagreement amongst various parliamentary parties thus making it difficult for the PPP to get it approved from the Parliament against March 30 deadline set by President Zardari. Other challenges that have adversely contributed to dismal performance of the PPP-led government was its inept and untimely decision to address the issues of public interest including lawlessness, bad economic management and governments failure to control price hike.
Sources said that public at large was unhappy over the performance of President Zardari and his ruling party making it far more difficult to rally masses support for the success of its plans.