ASIF Ali Zardari is up to something after hibernating for so long and some hopefuls are willing him on towards a grand alliance of the opposition including a variety as diverse as there has ever been.

This world has seen more unlikely alliances, but that doesn’t mean anyone should be jumping to conclusions here. It will take the former president a lot more to be called a real challenge for the PML-N government.

For the moment, all Zardari has done is to ‘put his weight behind’ Imran Khan’s demand for the investigation of polling in four constituencies. There has been no immediate angry reaction from the PML-N’s statement squad to this latest ‘twist’ by the PPP leader. It is unlikely that a strong, adversarial reaction from the PML-N government will come anytime soon, given Mr Zardari’s known preference for playing damage controller than an out and out opponent in the old Pakistani mould.

There have been reports that the PPP leader wanted to mediate between Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and the PML-N over the disputed election. At least for now, this is what the aim could be, even though a couple of critical sentences in which Zardari appears to pull up Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for acting like a monarch have been thrown into the mix for effect.

The PPP has been trying to use the situation created by Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri to settle its own issues with the Nawaz set-up.

The former president asserts that the skies are not going to fall if the government allowed the PTI the concession of probing the allegations of rigging in four National Assembly seats during the 2013 election. This signalled somewhat of a departure from his silent spectator role in the ongoing tussle between the PML-N and the PTI, a calculated one. He obviously realises he loses nothing by voicing his wise words on Imran’s four-seat demand. In either scenario, he apparently expects to be in a good position to gain some advantage.

On a day when Imran Khan called for an audit of the whole general election, the ex-president appeared to be laying the foundations on which a compromise between the PTI and the PML-N could be reached. Given all these noises surrounding the PTI’s declaration of a march on Islamabad on Aug 14, and the panic the call has generated in PML-N ranks, there will be pressure on the federal government to accept this as a resolution. On the contrary, it will be difficult for the PTI to accept a four-seat settlement considering the momentum it has built up.

This is a highly unlikely scenario which requires Imran to agree to Zardari’s mediation, notwithstanding the former president’s reputation as a man who knew the art of moving forward through negotiations. Since the chances are that the role will be denied to him by a PTI leader who doesn’t mince his words in dismissing the PPP as part of the problem rather than a possible harbinger of the solution, there are other — for the PPP quite significant — gains to be had from the current situation.

The PPP has been trying for some time to use the acrimonious situation created by Imran and Dr Tahirul Qadri to settle its own issues with the Nawaz set-up in Islamabad. In recent days, the Sindh government has been very vocal in expressing its anger against the interference by Islamabad in provincial matters. Apart from this, there has been quite a lot of noise internally about how the PPP has willingly allowed itself to be reduced to a party on the substitute bench rather than one in the field chasing clear-cut national goals.

The debate within the PPP centring on the Musharraf trial betrays various strands of thinking within the party. Quite clearly, there are some who are fed up with the way Asif Zardari has settled for, some would say, a supporting role that promises his camp nothing useful. Former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has shown his impatience at the wait-and-watch strategy of the PPP, and it is not difficult to see where he is speaking from.

Apart from the fact that he, like some other PPP leaders, is faced with a court trial, Gilani speaks from Punjab and within Punjab from an area where, many say, the PPP can still rally some support. The feeling is that by allowing the PTI a free rein to act as the only opposition to the PML-N, the PPP is demeaning and destroying itself. The party does not have to be a partner of either the government or the PTI drive at this crucial moment; what some diehard PPP activists are demanding of their leadership, in murmurs and sometimes loud grumbles, is a policy which helps it regain its distinct identity.

That’s a tough one for Asif Zardari. He has carried his wait-and-see policy to a point where he has actually stretched his party too thin. He would also be mindful that any tactics that could lead to a snap poll would not suit his party, which has done precious little in the time since the May 2013 election to improve its all-Pakistan image. And he would be mindful of the rifts an in-party argument, such as the one over Gen Musharraf’s exit from the presidency and his trial, can bring to the fore.

The ideal of a distinctive identity for his party is not served by Asif Zardari trying to seize the mantle of a mediator between Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif. There are many in the PPP who would be telling him that he should shift his focus from his role as self-appointed saviour of democracy to concentrate on the monarch and his actions.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, July 18th, 2014