From Prison to Zenith of Politics in Pakistan

marwatone · #1 Tuesday, March 11, 2008

From Prison to Zenith of Politics in Pakistan
By JANE PERLEZ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of the slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, now sits at the pinnacle of Pakistani politics. It is a startling comeback for a man who, though never convicted here, spent 11 years in jail here on corruption and murder charges as one of Pakistan’s most ostracized figures.

The election victory last month of Ms. Bhutto’s party, which he now leads, has left Mr. Zardari, 51, Pakistan’s kingmaker. He came closer than ever to official rehabilitation last week, when a court here dropped many of the corruption cases against him.

The last two cases in Pakistan are scheduled to be dismissed this week. These days, Mr. Zardari’s most pressing concern is whom to choose as prime minister, a decision he is expected to make any day now.

Mr. Zardari’s sudden revival is a reminder of how Pakistan has veered between military rule and civilian governments that have been dogged by allegations of corruption, and how those cases can be prosecuted — or wiped away — depending on the political winds.

The dismissal of the corruption cases was a key demand by Ms. Bhutto as she negotiated her return to Pakistan after eight years in exile, under an American-backed power sharing deal intended to preserve President Pervez Musharraf.

But it is Mr. Zardari who has become the accidental beneficiary of that plan, which is now in shreds. On Sunday, he and the other main opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, said they would seek to curb what remained of the president’s already diminished powers. The pair pledged to bring an end to the Musharraf era.

In an interview just before the elections, Mr. Zardari said the cases against him were politically driven. The accord agreed to by Mr. Musharraf, known as the National Reconciliation Order, and on which the court acted last week, exonerated him, he said.

“Before she laid down her life she made sure that the world acknowledged, everybody acknowledged that they were politically motivated cases,” Mr. Zardari said of Ms. Bhutto in an interview just before the elections. “So I think I am exonerated.”

In the interview, Mr. Zardari seemed almost impervious to the corruption cases, and to the fact that he remained on bail with more than a dozen other defendants on conspiracy charges in the 1996 murder of his brother-in-law, Murtaza Bhutto. Ms. Bhutto said the killing was a plot by Pakistani intelligence agencies to divide and weaken her family.

“They always come to me through legality,” Mr. Zardari said. “They always have a legal reason. After all, Christ was tried. It is not that they didn’t give him a trial. They did. How good the trial was, that is another thing.”

The National Reconciliation Order absolved politicians, bankers and bureaucrats — but not ordinary citizens — charged with corruption offenses from 1988 to October 1999, when Mr. Musharraf grabbed power in a bloodless coup.

The five cases against Mr. Zardari that were dismissed last week ranged from charges that he took $10 million in kickbacks from a gold importing company to allegations that he improperly used government funds to build a polo ground at the prime minister’s residence in Islamabad.

In the gold case, Mr. Zardari was charged with taking bribes from ARY International Exchange, a gold bullion dealership based in Dubai, in exchange for awarding the company an exclusive license in 1994 to import more than $500 million worth of gold that was used in Pakistan’s jewelry businesses.

A report on private banking and money laundering in the United States Congress in 1999 said Mr. Zardari had accumulated $40 million in Citibank accounts. In describing the ARY case, the report cited allegations that some of Mr. Zardari’s Citibank accounts were used to “disguise $10 million in kickbacks for a gold importing contract in Pakistan.” Mr. Zardari always denied the charges, and the head of the company, Abdul Razzak Yaqub, denied he had paid bribes.

Another case that was dismissed by the anticorruption court involved charges that Mr. Zardari had received illegal commissions from two Swiss companies, Cotecna, and Société Générale de Surveillance, after the companies were awarded a contract for pre-shipment inspections for imports to Pakistan.

That case is also being tried in Switzerland. In 2003, a Swiss magistrate found him and Ms. Bhutto guilty on money laundering charges, and ordered them to return $12 million to the Pakistani government. The couple fought the charges vigorously and appealed the case, prompting a new investigation by the Swiss authorities that resulted in new charges of aggravated money laundering.

Mr. Zardari, who has various health problems and declined to show up at hearings in Geneva after his release from prison in 2004 on the grounds that he was too ill, has continued to appeal the case, now being heard by the court of appeals there.

In Britain, Mr. Zardari faces a civil case brought in connection with a country manor with hundreds of acres in southern England where he made extensive renovations, including the installation of an imitation of a local pub.

The Pakistani government is seeking to recover the money that Mr. Zardari used to pay for the manor on the grounds that it was ill-gotten gains. People involved in the case said last week that the case was still active and being contested by Mr. Zardari.

The corruption charges against Mr. Zardari stem from his actions during Ms. Bhutto’s two terms as prime minister, a time when he was known as “Mr. 10 Percent” because of allegations that he demanded a cut of contracts after his wife assumed office in 1988.

She was dismissed in 1990 after two years in office, and Mr. Zardari served three years in prison from 1990 to 1993 on corruption charges that were never proved.

In her second term, from 1993 to 1996, he wielded more power as minister of environment and investment. When she was dismissed in 1996 by President Farooq Leghari, Mr. Zardari was again arrested on corruption charges.

He remained in prison until November 2004, shuffling among facilities in Lahore, Rawalpindi and his home city of Karachi, always the wheeler dealer, whether in jail or out.

Mr. Zardari was classified as an A class prisoner and received certain privileges: a separate room from the main prison wing with an attached bathroom, air-conditioning and two servants.

A lawyer, Talib Rizvi, who often visited him in jail, said Mr. Zardari always managed to have the best of food, and always seemed in high spirits.

“I had one of my finest lunches in that jail — Asif used to get food from Clifton House,” said Mr. Rizvi, referring to the grand Bhutto family residence in Karachi. “He would get food for 50 people.” Expensive gifts to friends were customary, including gold cufflinks “worth thousands of dollars,” and sets of fountain pens, he said.

And as generous as Mr. Zardari was toward his friends, Mr. Rizvi said, he was as tough against his enemies. Mr. Rizvi said Mr. Zardari offered to organize revenge against assailants who had shot at Mr. Rizvi in the remote area of Baluchistan when he went to defend men charged with the murder of a tribal leader.

Afterward, Mr. Rizvi, who said he regarded himself as a big admirer of Mr. Zardari, recalled: “I said, ‘I am not going to press charges.’ Asif said, ‘I will see to it — I will finish them.’ ” Mr. Rizvi said he advised Mr. Zardari that his offer was not necessary.

After his release from jail in 2004 as part of an early but failed reconciliation effort between the Musharraf government and Ms. Bhutto, Mr. Zardari took up residence in Manhattan, living in the elegant Helmsley Carlton apartment block on 61st Street and Madison Avenue.

Mr. Zardari, attentive to his grooming, which sometimes includes a stylized blackened mustache instead of his natural salt and pepper, has always had a taste for the high life, according to his friends.

Azher Khan, who attended high school with him in a rural area of Sindh Province, said Mr. Zardari was something of a playboy in the early 1970s, and had the advantage of a father who owned the Bambina Cinema, which featured a risqué neon sign.

In the early 1970s, Mr. Zardari went to London. There, he said in the interview, he attended the London School of Business Studies and received a bachelor of education degree. His official biography says he attended a commercial college called Pedinton School. But a search of tertiary educational institutions in London showed no such school, and associates said he did not finish his studies.

The question of whether Mr. Zardari has a university degree is a delicate matter because President Musharraf introduced a law in 2002 that made it compulsory for parliamentary candidates to hold a degree in order to qualify for electoral office.

There are now expectations among his political colleagues and in the Pakistani news media that Mr. Zardari will run for Parliament so he can then assume the post of prime minister.

In the interview, Mr. Zardari said the prime minister’s office did not interest him because it would be “very restrictive.” He wanted, instead, to re-energize the Pakistan Peoples Party.

Asked in the interview if he had a degree, Mr. Zardari replied: “I do have a degree. That is not an issue.” He said he attended the London School of Business Studies “much before I was married. I think it’s a B.Ed. degree. I haven’t really looked at it,” he said, referring to a bachelor of education.

Mr. Zardari, three years younger than Ms. Bhutto, was chosen as her husband by Ms. Bhutto’s mother at the moment when Ms. Bhutto was entering politics. It was considered an unusual match: brainy Oxford and Harvard graduate with a polo-loving, hard-living charmer.

Once Ms. Bhutto came into power, Mr. Zardari was often regarded as a liability in her political career.

Ahmad Mukhtar, who was commerce minister in Ms. Bhutto’s second term and appears to be Mr. Zardari’s favored candidate for prime minister in the new coalition government, recalls telling Ms. Bhutto: “There is propaganda against him, and we get a black name from it. Next time you come to power send him to play polo in Argentina.”

But Mr. Mukhtar said he came to like Mr. Zardari when they shared time together in jail in Karachi. Mr. Mukhtar was arrested in May 2000 by the Musharraf government on charges connected with his tenure as commerce minister. The charges were dropped 17 months later.

Mr. Zardari is one of more than a dozen people accused in a conspiracy in 1996 to kill Ms. Bhutto’s brother, Murtaza, a political opponent of Mr. Zardari and Ms. Bhutto, according to Omar Sial, a lawyer for the family of Mr. Bhutto.

Asked in the interview if he was on bail, Mr. Zardari replied: “That is correct.” And not just in one case, he added, “but I don’t know how many.”

The murder case is still active but has languished for 12 years, because Mr. Zardari and the other defendants, mostly policemen, have failed to show up in court.

“He claims to be grievously ill and says he couldn’t travel,” said Fatima Bhutto, the daughter of Murtaza Bhutto and a critic of Ms. Bhutto and her husband. “Then his wife dies, he turns up fit and fine, perfectly healthy and it seems to be lies.”

Even now that Mr. Zardari is in the country, however, no one here believes the case will be pursued seriously.

AmerAliShah · #2 Tuesday, March 11, 2008

"wohee haaal haain faqeeeroun kaaaaay....dinnn badlaaay hain faqt wazeeroun kaaay.......
harr Bilawal hai daais kaaa maqrooz...paoun nangaay hain bainazeeroun kaaay"(Habib Jalib)
A beautiful article.......Long Live Shaheed Bhutto!

Muhammed Usman · #3 Tuesday, March 11, 2008

after reading above passage these lines of christopher marlow ( correct me if i'm wrong over this ) comes tomy mind

as flies to the wanton boys, we are to politicians*
they kill us for their sport

* in origina text, poet used gods in place of pliticians, but it founf out politicians more appropriate

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