Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, in a Dubai hospital for “heart surgery”, may resign soon, a media report said. Mr Zardari, also co-chairman of the ruling PPP, flew to Dubai suddenly on Tuesday complaining of heart pain.
Mr Zardari has been under increasing pressure over the Memogate scandal that nearly sent the PPP government packing. President Zardari may resign, said a dispatch posted on the website of the magazine Foreign Policy. “The noose was getting tighter — it was only a matter of time,” The Cable, Foreign Policy’s blog, quoted a former US government official as saying. The official expressed the growing expectation inside the US government that Mr Zardari may be on the way out, the dispatch said.
The US ex-official said that when President Obama spoke to Mr Zardari over the weekend regarding Nato’s killing of 26 Pakistani soldiers, Mr Zardari was “incoherent”. He said parts of the US government were informed that Mr Zardari had suffered a “minor heart attack” Monday night and flew to Dubai in an air ambulance Tuesday. He may have angioplasty on Wednes-day and may also resign due to “ill health”, it said.
This is the “in-house change option” that has been talked about, Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Centre at the Atlantic Council, told The Cable. Mr Nawaz said this plan would see Mr Zardari step aside and be replaced by his own party, preserving a veneer of civilian rule but ultimately acceding to the military’s wishes to get rid of Mr Zardari, according to The Cable.
The President’s House dismissed the media reports as “speculative, imaginary and untrue” and said he was in Dubai for a regular medical check-up.