A statement of Asif Ali Zardari, issued from his Dubai abode, took the chattering class in Pakistan by storm on Tuesday, for the PPP supremo said in it that if army chief General Raheel Sharif retired in November as he has committed to, the hopes people have put in him can turn into despair.

But the consternation that it caused in the party back home, made Zardari’s retinue to reissue the statement, minus the politically damaging plea. Didn’t he thunder last June that army chief's have three-year term while politicians are there for ever?

It could be that the bigger reality of taking a flight to Dubai after making the bluster dawned on him the next day and, according to TV anchor Hamid Mir, he disowned the statements issued in his name twice.

That may be so, but how should one read the resolution filed the same day (Wednesday) by PPP MPA Khurram Wattoo in the Punjab Assembly that though Gen Raheel’s has publicly stated that he did not want his service extended, “this house asks the federal government to give him extension in his service”?

Anchorperson Hamid Mir’s account says that Zardari was unaware of the statement put out on his behalf, and was amended in its second version, discarding the retirement of army chief and retaining rest of the content of the first one, which had paid tributes to the sacrifices of the armed forces in the ongoing Zarb-i-Azb operation against militancy in the country.

Nobody is clear what circumstances caused the faux pas; though a couple of well-connected PPP officials had no qualms in admitting that the statement attempted to appease the military establishment. But who? Zardari himself was away in New York during the fiasco.

“Of course, somebody close to the former president Asif Ali Zardari,” said the party officials, refusing to go beyond that response.

A party insider was certain that “the statement was issued after clearance from an influential member of the party who has significant control over party affairs.”

Other PPP sources would only conjecture the intended purpose of the statement. “The party is no more in a position to take the establishment head on if it has to survive it needs to focus more on organisation than indulging in unnecessary confrontations,” he said.

“Politics is all about making right choices at the right moment,” he reminded. “Look at the MQM. Despite feeling the heat of the Rangers-led operations in Karachi, it has mellowed its criticism of the military establishment.”

At a time when the PML-N is howling at the feared National Accountability Bureau turning its guns towards Punjab, and the Rangers moving in to uproot militant centres in southern Punjab, the PPP leadership should support the actions which it has faced in Sindh.

That’s why he found the statement issued from Dubai, though its retirement part was “a bit overdone.” Indeed, the PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is clear in his mind that the task at hand is to rebuild the party vanquished in Punjab in the 2013 general election, not to pick up any fight with the powers that be, said the Punjab PPP leader.

Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2016