MANIPAL, India, Aug. 26 (UPI) -- After Pervez Musharraf himself, the individual who will be most nervous at the resignation of Pakistan's president is the Pakistan People's Party co-chairman, Asif Ali Zardari. For it was Musharraf -- admittedly with repeated prodding from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- who offered Benazir Bhutto's widower amnesty from the numerous corruption cases against him in exchange for his party's support for his presidency.

Zardari, for reasons unknown, declined to take over as prime minister of Pakistan, putting forward a presumed yes man, Yousaf Raza Gilani, in March.

The new prime minister, a Shiite and a Saraiki-Punjabi, lost less than a week in establishing direct links with the real power center in Pakistan, the army. He made the unusual gesture of personally calling on the chiefs of both the Inter-Services Intelligence and the army. Today it is to Gilani, rather than to Zardari, that military chief Ashfaq Kayani turns on the infrequent occasions when he wishes to consult the civilian authority. As for the ISI, that instrument of jihad continues to function under army headquarters.

Although he owes his job to Zardari, it is unlikely that Gilani will do more than offer a token resistance to the reinstatement of those judges sacked by Musharraf last year, including the Zardari-phobic former chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry.

The ambitious Gilani is aware that a fresh spell of imprisonment -- or enforced exile -- would significantly weaken the Zardari family's hold over the PPP, thus making him Pakistan's version of India's Narasimha Rao, the only individual to have succeeded, albeit temporarily, in wresting the Nehru-Maino family's grip over the Congress Party.