By Muhammad Najeeb, IANS
Islamabad : Murmurs of dissent have begun over the appointment of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari as her successor to head the country’s largest political party, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), after her assassination last month.
“I doubt that Bhutto in her will has nominated Zardari to head the party,” says a senior PPP leader. “Even the members of the Central Executive Committee (CEC) were not shown the will, just the selected portions were read,” he told IANS while requesting anonymity.
Four days after Benazir’s assassination, Zardari read out portions of her will in the party’s CEC meeting. The will said he was to head the party in her absence, he read.
But, Zardari said, he wanted their 19-year-old son Bilawal to chair the party while he would co-chair it until his son completes his studies at Oxford University.
However, some insiders of the party doubt that Bhutto, who kept Zardari away from politics, could have said such a thing in her will. Some opponents are saying this publicly.
“PPP workers have reasons to mourn first because they lost their leader and second because Zardari has captured the party,” Pervez Elahi, prime minister hopeful and leader of Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) said in his press conference.
When a journalist asked Zardari if he can make the will public, he replied: “It has certain other matters, family affairs and property distribution…the will is property of her children and we cannot make it public.”
But after articles in newspapers questioning the will, he announced that he would make the will public “at (an) appropriate time”.
A party insider told IANS that in his speech in the CEC meeting Zardari said that a family friend called him after Bhutto’s murder and said that he had a document that Benazir wanted delivered to her children after her death. According to the party leader Zardari did not give the name of the “family friend”.
The same sort questions had been raised over 20 years ago when Bhutto married Zardari, a man from a middle class family of Nawabshah in Sind. Some said the then president and military dictator of Pakistan General Zia ul Haq manipulated the marriage, while others termed it a choice of Bhutto’s mother Begum Nusrat Bhutto as she wanted a son-in-law with little influence.
Zardari, 51, has been enmeshed in controversies since 1988, when Benazir became prime minister of the country. “It was Zardari calling the shots during both her tenures and there was no say of party leaders, even the cabinet,” said another PPP leader who is a candidate in the coming elections.
During Benazir’s first stint in office, the media started calling Zardari “Mr Ten Percent”. He was alleged to be involved in all government affairs. But his wife always defended him, saying he was being accused of corruption to defame her and her party.
When his wife was prime minister, Zardari – who is polo player and loves riding – built a polo ground in the prime minister’s official residence. That made headlines in the media and he was roundly criticised.
During her second stint as prime minister in 1994, Benazir made her husband a cabinet minister. “I believe that all corruption charges against Bhutto was because of Zardari. She would have never had to face such charges if Zardari was not her husband,” said another PPP leader, who said during Benazir’s second stint, her husband was called “Mr Ninety Percent”.
Zardari is known to go really out of his way to help his friends – be it in allotment of quotas for factories, or contracts for private or government housing schemes. “My son has been destroyed by his friends,” his father Hakim Ali Zardari said once.
When Benazir’s first government was sacked in 1990, Zardari was jailed immediately on corruption charges and was released on condition that he would leave the country.
He returned to Pakistan weeks before the 1994 elections that saw Benazir being elected prime minister for a second term. He was again arrested in 1999 when her government was sacked once more on corruption charges. Zardari remained in jail until 2004 when he was allowed to leave the country for medical treatment.
“My place is either in jail or Prime Minister House,” Zardari once said in front of a judge.
Zardari has also been blamed for being behind the murder of Bhutto’s brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto who was killed in a clash with the police in 1996 when she was prime minister. But the charge was never proved.
“Why was the inquiry was not conducted into Murtaza’s murder, why were investigators not called from outside…we demand that the case be reopened,” Elahi of PML-Q said while terming Zardari “the most corrupt man in the political history of the country”.
Zardari could not spend much time with his children who lived in Dubai since 1998, as he was in jail. After his release in 2004 he went to the US for medical treatment and shifted to Dubai only a week before Bhutto came to Pakistan Oct 18, 2007.
Probably because of his reputation, Zardari, who is not a candidate for the Feb 18 polls, has announced that PPP’s vice chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim will be the party candidate for the prime minister’s post. But he will continue to hold the party reins.