ON September 6, Asif Ali Zardari won a sweeping victory in Pakistan's presidential election. He is the 14th president of the country. The election was called after former General Pervez Musharraf resigned rather than risk being impeached.
The president is elected by secret ballot in the national and four provincial assemblies. Mr. Zardari won 481 votes out of 702, far more than the 352 votes that would have guaranteed him victory, leaving his two rivals trailing far behind.
In Sindh province, Mr. Zardari won all 65 votes. In NWFP, he got 56 out of the 65 votes. In Balochistan province, he won 59 of the 65 votes. By contrast, he only won 22 out of 65 seats in Punjab province, the heartland of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's PML(N) party.
His election victory represents an extraordinary turnaround for Mr. 10 Percent, as he is known. He spent eight years in jail during President Musharraf's regime and eleven overall. It was Musharraf, though, who released him in 2004 and granted amnesty for corruption charges in 2007 as part of political haggling between Musharraf and the late Benazir Bhutto.
It is an irony that he has become the president of the country. What hope can the people expect from him, except of large promises, smooth excuses, conspiracy, chicanery and corruption!
How did he manage to win?
Mr. Zardari has been found to be a shrewd politician. He has taken firm control of Bhutto's ruling PPP, leading it to electoral victory in February. Bhutto's will named her 19-year-old son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, as party chairman and him as co-chairman.
Mr. Zardari, unpopular with his party's rank and file, has wrapped himself in the Bhutto mantle, drawing on the cultish support that stems from Benazir's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was toppled and hanged by the military in the late 1970s.
He surprisingly outwitted the former prime minister and veteran politician Nawaz Sharif in the political game. He engineered a coalition government with Nawaz Sharif and later refused to fulfill pledges to restore all the sacked judges or to reduce the powers of the president, to dissolve the parliament and the assemblies in the provinces.
He is believed to have convinced the Bush administration, through his friend, Afghan-born US ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, that his government needs as much power as possible and that means having his party people as president and prime minister so they can defeat the militants in Pakistan's tribal areas.
He also impressed upon US that it would be counter-productive to reduce the powers of the president under the current political and security environment in the country.
He is believed to have done a deal with the most powerful institution in the country, the army. He assured that his government would protect their interests, taking into account the army's foreign strategic concerns and making sure its share of the national budget is well stocked. The government would ensure a steady supply of aid and equipment from US to meet the army's needs to keep up with India.
He was also able to convince smaller parties that he was the best person to deal with the problems of the less populated provinces, because he belonged to Sindh and not to the Punjab (Nawaz Sharif hails from the Punjab).
He has made sensible efforts for reconciliation in insurgency-hit Balochistan and has forged links with the PPP's former rivals in the troubled NWFP, and the MQM, which governs Karachi, Pakistan's largest city.
Challenges
Mr. Zardari faces severe economic problems, including low stock prices, power shortage, inflation, soaring food prices and a rampant Islamist insurgency, that are threatening Pakistan's stability. During the voting, a bomb killed at least 30 people near Peshawar.
Many analysts doubt whether his government would be able to address economic problems and stamp out militants from Pakistan because his government would be locked in horns with the PML(N) on national issues.
Nawaz Sharif appears more popular with the middle class and lawyers on the question of restoration of all sacked judges, including former chief justice Iftekhar Chaudhry. Many analysts say that Sharif could eventually wipe out PPP's majority in the next national parliamentary election.
There is another dimension in Pakistan politics. While the US is believed to have lent strong support to Zardari, Saudi Arabia is believed to provide robust support to Nawaz Sharif. Accordingly, Zardari government would face a longer term all-out battle with Nawaz Sharif, and when two major political parties are at loggerheads, the country's unity is destroyed and nothing moves swiftly.
A weak and beleaguered government normally cannot deliver the desired goods, and in this case that would be stamping out the militants from Pakistan by the US.
Furthermore, majority in Pakistan believe that the so-called "war on terror" has been imposed on Pakistan by US and it is not their war so they have nothing to do with it.
Analysts doubt whether Zardari government would be able to control the powerful ISI from providing support to militants in the Indian-occupied Kashmir and in Afghanistan. The two territories have become magnets for foreign militants because they see war against Islam in these territories after Iraq. Some say that the militants have moved from Iraq to tribal areas in Pakistan for safe haven.
President Karzai of Afghanistan has been well disposed towards India where he was educated. He wants to develop good and strong relations with India with a view to reduce Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan. India has been largely engaged, with more than $1 billion, in assisting Afghanistan, including the construction of a new parliament building in Kabul.
Karzai has been warning Pakistan not to destabilise his country by sending militants to his country from Pakistan's tribal areas. Pakistan does not want to lose Afghanistan to India as a strategic policy. Pakistan does not want to be sandwiched between India and Afghanistan, which would be perceived as gradually falling under Indian sphere of influence.
Although for Zardari, this election victory is extraordinary, he will face many political and economic hurdles in running the country of 160 million people. Furthermore, the country is divided on major national issues, and the question is how long the PPP can govern the country until it has to call for a general election to sort out the political mess the major parties have created.

Barrister Harun ur Rashid is a former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva.