“Bhutto is alive”: Asif Ali Zardari sworn in as new Pakistan president

Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was sworn in as the new president of Pakistan at a ceremony at President House in the capital Islamabad today. Zardari recited the oath of office "I will bear true faith and allegiance to Pakistan” in front of supporters who chanted "Long live Bhutto" and "Bhutto is alive". The ceremony marks the completion of a stunning rise to power for the 53 year old Zardari who was thrust into the spotlight after his wife was assassinated at an election rally in December last year.

But while Zardari is still considered a political novice by some, he did show great nous in the last month as he removed the final obstacles to his ascension to the top job. He firstly oversaw a deal in which former president Pervez Musharraf resigned to avoid impeachment. Then Zardari neatly sidestepped his reluctant coalition partner Nawaz Sharif to convincingly win the presidential vote of the electoral college consisting of two houses of the parliament and four provincial assemblies on the weekend. Zardari’s swearing in now formally completes Pakistan's return to civilian rule nearly nine years after General Musharraf seized power in a bloodless military coup.

Zardari’s two daughters, Bakhtawar and Asifa, and his son, Bilawal were also in attendance at the inauguration ceremony. It was the Bilawal Bhutto Zardari who was anointed his mother’s chosen successor as leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the emotional aftermath of Bhutto’s assassination. But because of Bilawal’s youth (he turns 20 in a fortnight), he remains a figurehead only and his father was appointed co-chairman of the party. This was a strategic move as Zardari carried a lot of baggage having spent 11 years in prison on various charges including blackmail and corruption, for which he earned the nickname "Mr 10 per cent”.

But none of his chequered history was mentioned today as he feted by the country’s luminaries. Zardari was presented a guard of honour by a contingent of the armed forces and then visited by the Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, as well as members of the federal cabinet, Senate chairman, Chief Justice of Pakistan, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and chiefs of the three services. Zardari was anxious, however, to appear humble in his new role and ordered government departments not to issue advertisements congratulating him on his election. “We are a poor country and cannot afford such extravagance at the expense of taxpayers’ money,” he said. “The world is watching us and the government is facing many internal and external challenges.”

Chief among those challenges will be his ability to cobble together an effective ruling coalition now that Nawaz Sharif and his PML-N (Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz) party pulled out of government on 25 August. On Monday, Sharif rebuffed the president-elect’s offer to rejoin the coalition but pledged to play a constructive role in opposition. Sharif had been threatening to pull out of the coalition since May claiming the PPP had not kept its promises to restore judges sacked by Musharraf. Sharif did not contest the presidential election himself, but Zardari outpolled PML-N's candidate, former chief justice Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui, by a margin of three to one.

Another of Zardari’s challenges will be to present a moderate front to the extremism that racks Pakistan’s lawless fringes. While he was being sworn in, news emerged of a US missile attack a day earlier on Pakistani soil. The attack targeted a Taliban stronghold in the tribal province of North Waziristan. The attack backfired as it killed 23 people (mostly women and children) but failed to claim its target, Sirajuddin Haqqani, the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, whom the US accused of organising raids across the border in Afghanistan.

Haqqani senior had previously had the backing of Pakistani’s powerful spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence so the attack potentially signals a change of policy. Zardari has also been talking up the fight against the Taliban having raised eyebrows last month when he said Pakistan was losing the war. “The issue, which is not just a bad-case scenario as far as Pakistan is concerned or as Afghanistan is concerned but it is going to be spreading further,” he said. “The whole world is going to be affected by it." The world will now be watching Zardari to see what he does about it in his new role.

Benazir Bhutto: A new chapter in the tragedy of Pakistan

Former Pakistani leader Nawaz Sharif is calling for President Pervez Musharraf to resign immediately to "save Pakistan" in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto was murdered overnight in a suicide attack in Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad. She was shot in the neck by her attacker before he blew himself up killing 17 people. Sharif has blamed Musharraf for not protecting Bhutto. He said he will now boycott the planned 8 January elections because the president is a threat to the country’s stability. "I demand that Musharraf quit power, without delay of a single day, to save Pakistan,” he said.

As former Australian ambassador to Pakistan, Geoffrey Price, outlined in Quadrant in 1997, Bhutto had an amazing record of firsts. She was elected twice, dismissed twice, and twice defeated at the polls in the space of just eight years. She was the first female head of government in Pakistan and the first woman elected prime minister of an Islamic country. At 35, she was also the youngest elected prime minister of the 20th century. She was also the first PM to have a child (her second) in office. Price also called her the “worlds’ most glamorous head of government" when she took power in 1988.

In the view of the west, her beauty created an impression of a Pakistan that was making a metamorphosis from a military oligarchy into a vibrant democracy. But Bhutto was very much a creature of Pakistan’s elite. She hailed from a prominent political family. Bhutto adored her father, former Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He was illegally ousted from that role by President Zia ul-Haq who then tried and executed him for a specious murder charge. Benazir and her mother were interned until after the sentence was carried out. Bhutto then went into exile to Britain where she inherited her parents’ leadership of the democratic socialist Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

In 1987 she married Asif Ali Zardari, who hailed from a minor Baluchi feudal family. A year later Zia sacked his government and scheduled an election for a date he thought would coincide with the birth of Bhutto’s first child. But Bhutto had tricked him and the baby would be born well before the vital final weeks of campaigning. Shortly before the election, Zia died in mysterious circumstances when his plane crashed and exploded after takeoff from a military base. His death proved fortuitous to Bhutto and the PPP won the largest amount of seats in the election.

She formed a coalition government with the help of minor parties. There was general optimism in the air especially after she established an apparent rapport with Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi (the pair would suffer a similar ultimate fate). Pakistan returned to the Commonwealth fold. But tensions between Pakistan and India ran to deep and the early successes were squandered. The gloss began to fade as allegations of corruption, nepotism and tax evasion arose against her and her husband. New President Ishaq Khan sacked her government in 1990. In the election that followed, the PPP was easily beaten by Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League.

But less than three years later Sharif too was sacked by the army. Bhutto won the election and was prime minister a second time. This time she lasted three years only to face essentially the same charges of dismissal as the first time only this time by a new president (Farooq Leghari) and with a longer list of alleged offences. Most serious was the allegation she instigated police terrorism in Karachi against political opponents resulting in hundreds of deaths. Her husband was arrested and charged with the murder of Benazir’s brother Murtaza Bhutto who was becoming a political rival. This time round, the PPP were obliterated at the election that followed.

Bhutto and her husband went into exile in Dubai. The couple wealth is believed to be in the region of $1.5 billion. Her two terms frustratingly delivered very little. She and her husband are wanted on corruption charges in several countries. Switzerland accused the couple of gaining multi-million dollar kickbacks in exchange for handing out a contract to a Swiss firm during Bhutto's second term as Prime Minister. But with Musharraf’s regime in trouble and elections due in January, the time was ripe for Bhutto to come home. She returned to a hero’s welcome in October and narrowly avoided assassination in another suicide attack. This time she was not so lucky.

Her death provides Pervez Musharraf with a new set of problems. He came to power with pro-American policies. But when he attempted to stack the Supreme Court with his appointees, he triggered a massive backlash from lawyers and judges. He is under heavy pressure from the US to end military rule. Washington concocted an “arranged marriage”: Bhutto would return to Pakistan, there would be elections, followed by a power-sharing deal. And the status quo would carry on with renewed legitimacy. But neither Musharraf nor Bhutto would not have been able to stop the rot of corruption, poverty, and underdevelopment that plagues the country.

Neither can control militant elements. Nor would they have been able to control the military. The army has often aligned itself with Islamist forces. The Zia government backed Hezb-i-Islami which is now aligned with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Even Benazir Bhutto was forced to recognise the legitimacy of the Taliban government in Afghanistan (the only country to do so). As Sharif Shuja observed in the National Observer, a majority of Pakistanis don’t want Sharia Law but if it comes, it won’t be as a result of an election. A nuclear armed Pakistan ruled by Islamic militants could conceivably be a greater problem to world stability than Iran. The assassination of Bhutto may bring forward that outcome, albeit masked by “the necessity” of military rule.

Musharraf warns Bhutto to wait

President Pervez Musharraf told Pakistani TV yesterday that former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto should not return home until after a court ruling on the legality of his overwhelming re-election victory last week. Pakistan’s Supreme Court will consider opposition challenges to Musharraf's eligibility in last Saturday’s election. The two are currently plotting an end to Bhutto’s exile and a power sharing arrangement next year. However Musharraf would not elaborate why he thought Bhutto should wait till after the decision.

The court reconvenes on 17 October and Bhutto, 54, is due to return from her eight year exile on the following day. Her Pakistan People's Party has requested a bullet-proof vehicle and extra police protection on her arrival. Their request follows a threat by a Waziri pro-Taliban militant leader, Baitullah Mehsud, to kill Bhutto in a suicide attack. Bhutto told a newspaper interview on the weekend she accepts her homecoming is fraught with danger. "I know there are security risks, people who want to kill me and to scuttle the restoration of democracy,” she said. "But with my faith in God and trust in the people of Pakistan, I'm sure the party workers will be there and will protect me."

Two time premier Bhutto hopes to lead her party to victory in the next parliamentary election. Pakistan is scheduled to hold a parliamentary poll in early January 2008. Musharraf and Bhutto have already begun negotiating a power sharing arrangement post election. The pair have similar views and are both, in the main, pro-American and anti-Taliban. The deal would see the vulnerable Musharraf cling to presidential power while Bhutto would become Prime Minister.

Bhutto has now requested the Sindh High Court to review her claim to a National Assembly seat reserved for women. Her previous application for the seat was disqualified in 2002 after the government launched a corruption case against her. But last week Musharraf took a major step in the pre-election horse-trading by issuing a “reconciliation ordnance”. This was shorthand for an amnesty on corruption and grants across-the-board immunity for politicians who were active between 1985 and 2007. The ordnance quashes the corruption case against Bhutto.

The move has presented a quandary for Swiss authorities who also have charges of money laundering against Benazir Bhutto and her husband, now based in Dubai. The Swiss accuse the couple of gaining multi-million dollar kickbacks in exchange for handing out a contract to a Swiss firm during Bhutto's second term as Prime Minister in the mid 1990s. The Bhuttos were found guilty in a Geneva court in 2003 but have appealed. Dominique Henchoz, the Pakistani government’s lawyer in Switzerland said he was unsure if the legal action would be stopped. "We'll have to wait to examine the exact wording used in the decree," he said. "Because surely to speak of an amnesty implies that there has been an act of corruption.”

But whatever the outcome in Switzerland, bigger problems may lie ahead at home. Another former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, is also returning from exile in the next six weeks. Sharif’s son said his father would return to Pakistan sometime between 15 and 30 November – well ahead of the parliamentary elections. Sharif is a two time Prime Minister from the 1990s and long-term opponent of Bhutto. In 1999 Musharraf deposed Sharif in a military coup after Sharif had tried to sack Musharraf as army chief.

Sharif was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. His sentence was later commuted to exile in Saudi Arabia after Saudi King Abdullah gave personal assurances to guarantee his conduct. Saudi authorities have now tried to dissuade him from returning to Pakistan but Sharif says he is going anyway. Sharif has been heartened by a recent Pakistani Supreme Court decision that he had an “inalienable right" to come back and the Government would be in contempt of court if it tried to stop him. Sharif will be the wildcard in the poker game to come between Musharraf and Bhutto.