Less than a year ago, Asif Ali Zardari would have hardly been considered a likely candidate for high office. His image was that of a flamboyant polo-playing former businessman who had to fight allegations of corruption and shake off the nickname of "Mr Ten Per Cent".
But tomorrow he is widely expected to become the next president of Pakistan , a nuclear-armed state with a raging insurgency on its hands and al-Qaeda safe havens on its territory. As Pakistan's strategic importance to the west grows ever greater, he is set to become a central figure in America's war against terror.
The nightmare for Washington is that Pakistan's nuclear weapons fall one day into the hands of Islamist extremists. Among its very highest priorities are preventing al-Qaeda from planning another September 11-style attack from its Pakistani base and stopping support for the Taliban in Pakistan's border regions from fatally weakening Nato's efforts in Afghanistan. But in Pakistan, where civilian power has often been constrained and where anti-American sentiment is on the rise, there may be real limits to Mr Zardari's willingness or ability to co-operate with such an agenda.
The 53-year-old's unlikely rise came after the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, plunged him into the heart of Pakistani politics last December as co-chair of her Pakistani People's party, together with their 19-year-old son Bilawal.
On Tuesday, Mr Zardari was reminded once more that the risks politicians face in Pakistan are far from just electoral, when shots were fired at the bullet-proof car of Yusuf Raza Gilani, prime minister. No one was hurt but the attack on the prime minister's well-protected motorcade was another pointer to how Pakistani leaders remain vulnerable to a bloody backlash by Islamic militants who oppose any government support for the US and its aims.
Economic doldrums
The Pakistani rupee has fallen almost 25 per cent against the dollar since the start of the year, in a setback to government efforts at stabilising an economy beset by rising inflation, diminishing foreign currency reserves and a fall-off in inward investment, writes Farhan Bokhari.
"There is a lot of uncertainty all around. There is no investment flowing in. Unless the situation improves rapidly, the decline will continue," says a senior treasury official at a Pakistani bank.
Pervez Musharraf's nine-year tenure as president saw high economic growth and unprecedented privatisation as foreign investment flowed into the country, supported by as much as $10bn (£5.6bn, €6.9bn) in US aid. For Asif Ali Zardari, his presumed successor, US largesse will be especially important in the face of an increasingly moribund economy.
Consensus forecasts are for gross domestic product growth to slow this year to 4.8 poer cent from 6.4 per cent in 2007. "There is a growing sense that unless the political uncertainty is totally reversed, investors will not return to Pakistan," says Shuja Rizvi of Karachi's Capital One Securities, a brokerage house.
Last month, officials at the Karachi Stock Exchange took the unprecedented step of freezing share prices at a level that was declared the floor below which they would not be allowed to drop. This followed a fall of almost 36 per cent in the KSE-100 index from its April peak.
Inflation has reached a record 25 per cent. There is evidence of a growing street outcry against the government over the economic direction. "After militancy, the economy is the biggest political issue" says a western ambassador.
Parliamentary elections in February, in which the PPP emerged as the biggest party, and the subsequent marginalisation of Pervez Musharraf, long Pakistan's US-backed ruler, gave Mr Zardari real power. Now the highest office in the land is his for the taking, thanks to Mr Musharraf's resignation last month under heavy pressure from the civilian politicians.
The PPP does not have a majority in the federal parliament on its own. But Mr Zardari has won support from regional political parties, including a bloc of Islamists as well as independent candidates. That should net him well over half the required votes from the electoral college of 700 federal and provincial MPs. Although he will not have the authority of his late wife, the leading PPP figure for three decades, Mr Zardari is eager to emerge as a unifying figure in a country in which militancy is on the rise. "Our politics is aimed at saving Pakistan from disintegration," he said in remarks published in the Pakistani press on Wednesday.
His opponents see things differently. "If, God forbid, Mr Zardari becomes the president, there are enough controversies over him that would make him a divisive figure to lead this country," says Mushahid Hussain, a presidential contender from the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid e Azam (PML-Q), the party previously loyal to Mr Musharraf. "Given the challenges we face as a country, we need national unity rather than disunity. Zardari should be the last man to become president."
Nor do those who question Mr Zardari's fitness for office refer just to the past allegations of corruption , which his friends say have never been conclusively proved. In instances where he has been sentenced, there were sufficient grounds to enter an appeal in a higher court, Mr Zardari's friends add. A Financial Times investigation last month revealed he had submitted documents to a court in the UK citing psychological problems such as dementia, major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Mr Zardari used the medical diagnoses to argue successfully for the postponement of a now-defunct English High Court case in which Pakistan's government was suing him over alleged corruption.
Wajid Shamsul Hasan, high commissioner to the UK and a friend of Mr Zardari, says the concerns about his psychological health are exaggerated and stem from the days when he was imprisoned in Pakistan, tortured and threatened with assassination. "His doctors have declared him medically fit to run for political office and free of any symptoms," he says.
Still, any leader, no matter how fit, might find it difficult to maintain a grip on Pakistan, not least because of its political instability and the still unclear dividing lines between civilian authorities and the military that has run the country for most of its 61 years as an independent state.
"The real fear in Washington is that this sense of instability and fragility will impede any progress," says Daniel Markey, a former US official now at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. "There is an openness to working with Zardari, but there is a scepticism in terms of what he is capable of producing . . . There is a question about anyone in that role, because it's such a difficult country to govern."
Mr Zardari will have to contend with opposition from Nawaz Sharif, his former coalition partner who leads the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the second biggest party. Mr Sharif, a veteran practitioner of politics in a way that Mr Zardari is not, left the government last month and has set out more popular positions than his rival, from his call for Mr Musharraf to be ejected to signalling greater wariness about working with the US.
An even more immediate constraint on the next president's power will be the army. It remains the most powerful institution in the country despite the avowed intention of Gen Ashfaq Kiyani, the chief of staff who took over that role from Mr Musharraf last November, to distance the military from politics. The government has yet to wrest control of Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency from the army, despite one attempt and US accusations , furiously denied by Pakistani officials , that the ISI was involved in the bombing of India's embassy in Afghanistan in July.
Furthermore, while the army has conceded the political sphere to the country's civilian politicians, the battle against Islamist militants is very much in the military domain. "Gen Kiyani may choose to be apolitical but the army is a powerful body because it is the only institution which can make a difference to this war," says a western defence official based in Islamabad.
In the past month, the Pakistani military has stepped up strikes in regions reputed to harbour militants allied to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, killing up to 400 of them by some estimates. "Pakistan depends so much on the US and Pakistan's position in economic terms is so vulnerable that the option of turning back from this effort is just not going to be on the table for Mr Zardari," says Hasan Askari Rizvi, a security and political affairs expert.
Mr Zardari is also all too aware that any attack against the US planned and executed on Pakistani soil could bring massive retaliation. But there are limits to the extent to which Mr Zardari , or any Pakistani leader , is likely to co-operate. Doubt has also been cast on occasion at the commitment of the army to curbing Islamist forces. "The recent campaign by the Pakistani military is impressive. But can they sustain it? That's the key question," says a western ambassador in Islamabad.
US officials show impatience at a Pakistani ceasefire for the holy month of Ramadan that began this week, seeing the halt to hostilities as part of a failure to get systematically to grips with the insurgency. Mr Markey says the military relationship is settling down into one in which the US targets al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects in Pakistan with air strikes, complementing Pakistani military efforts.
But even this is controversial within the country: one such strike in June killed several of Pakistan's Frontier Corps militia. On Wednesday, moreover, Pakistani officials say at least 15 people were killed when Afghan-based US troops attacked homes of suspected militants in Angor Adda, a town near the Afghan border. This first use of ground troops on Pakistani soil indicated the uneasy state of relations and drew a formal protest from Islamabad.
To many Pakistanis the battle against Islamist militants is Washington's war, not one in which their nation should be involved. "I am torn between PPP , the liberal party , and my opposition to the US war against terror," says Nazeer Alam, a postal worker who identifies himself as a second-generation PPP supporter. "The PPP offers a hope for the future, but America is Pakistan's enemy and the enemy of Islam," he adds. "If Asif Zardari is going to be sponsored by America, what good will he bring to Pakistan?"
Such divisions remain perhaps the biggest difficulty for Mr Zardari as he prepares to take on the presidency. Whatever his personal frailties may be, and no matter exactly how power is shared with the military, he like any other prospective Pakistani leader will have to steer a tricky path between helping curb world terrorism and avoiding inflaming domestic opinion.
The presidency would "present the biggest challenge of his lifetime, especially the fight against hardline groups", says Talib Rizvi, a leading lawyer and a friend of Mr Zardari's. "Unlike what he is used to in polo, he is in for riding a very wild horse."
