The Emperor of Chance

At most times, he was only a liability for Benazir Bhutto. Nobody could have imagined a scenario where he became the head of the country himself. HARINDER BAWEJA tracks the bizarre and charmed life of Asif Ali Zardari

The princess and the playboy Zardari and Benazir Bhutto in 1989 Photos: Corbis

ZULFIKAR ALI BHUTTO had been dead eight years and Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of the east, was in London, where military dictator Zia-ul-Haq had finally allowed her to go after years of being under house arrest in their family home of Larkana, when Asif Ali Zardari’s name was first ever heard or spoken of. It was the year 1987. The Oxford-educated heir apparent of the Bhutto dynasty had shocked her friends — she had more in the West than in Pakistan — by announcing that she had consented to an arranged marriage, to a “match” brought to her by her mother, Nusrat.

More than her own, the wedding was to change his life. Twenty years ago, when the marriage was announced, Zardari, the little-known son of a Sindhi businessman, attracted attention for the frills. For the heart-shaped diamond and sapphire ring he slipped on Benazir’s finger, and for the red roses he sent her everyday for about six months till they were married on December 18, 1987. Twenty years later, on December 27, 2007, the husband began a journey as the widower of ‘Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto’, adding another chapter to a rollercoaster life that has had the whimsical hand of fate written all over it. It is all so strange that a fevered plotmeister would struggle with the storyline. It is understandable that Benazir’s turbulent life spurred the bizarre twists of Zardari’s. But that her untimely death would catapult him to becoming the President of Pakistan is something no one could ever have imagined.

History will take a long time to judge and place Asif Ali Zardari, and his surreal trajectory to pre-eminence. But the present has always been easy with the labels.

Playboy. Polo Player. Mr Ten Percent. These are only some of the suffixes that have dogged the 53-year-old President. The descriptors stuck early, going back all the way to 1987, when everyone in Pakistan wanted to know who this man was. The answers were not very flattering. The son of a cinema house owner was known as one of Karachi’s leading philanderers; as a party animal who’d even built a disco with a dance floor and strobe lights in his home; as someone who was not even a graduate; and certainly as someone who was the complete unequal of a pedigreed woman who was the country’s most prized catch.

Mixed fortunes Zardari and with foe-turnedfriend- turned-foe Nawaz

This was not a burden Benazir carried heavily. She was clear: she was obliged not only by duty to her parents but also by duty to her religion. “Love will come after marriage,’’ she often said. And she was quick to point out that her husband may be too macho by Western standards but, crucially, he understood that her legacy demanded she immerse herself in public and political work. Such discomfort as she had with adjusting her Western education and lifestyle with the demands of a feudal Pakistan, she worked hard to quell. While talking of arranged marriages, she was wont to say, “Really, how it is any different from using a computer dating service?”

Zardari may now have struck the pose of the Godfather — his favourite film, as most will tell you in Pakistan — but back then, he was more than willing to live a charmed life in his wife’s shadow. In turn, Benazir, who was then modeling herself after Margaret Thatcher, played down her anxieties about Zardari. In her autobiography, Daughter of the East, she wrote about how her high public profile precluded her from meeting potential mates in the way most people do. In other words, an arranged marriage was a price she had chosen to pay.

Predictably, as Benazir had perhaps willed it, love arranged itself into the marriage and her eldest child, son Bilawal, was a mere two months old when she went full throttle into an election campaign that saw her being sworn in, in December 1988, as the youngest woman prime minister of an Islamic country.

Mixed fortunes Zardari leaves a court in 1998. PHOTOS: REUTERS.

While Benazir was basking in the glory of bringing the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) back to power, nine years after her father and the party’s founder was hanged by the vindictive martial law dictator, Zia-ul-Haq, Zardari was enjoying the perks — and there were many — of being the prime minister’s husband. Often described in the Pakistani media as a man of limited wealth and limited education — he did a stint at the Cadet College near Hyderabad and spent but a few months at a London commercial college — Zardari, the spouse, found the power heady. His love for designer clothes, foreign cars and wristwatches suddenly appeared a minor flaw, as he apparently quickly graduated to a much bigger league, a world of big deals and contracts. It was in this time that he earned the sobriquet of Mr Ten Percent — an allusion to his take in assisting a file to move or a negotiation to conclude.

TEN PERCENT, however, appears too small a commission for a man charged and convicted on serious charges of corruption; too small a sum for the polo player who admitted to owning Rockwood, a £4.5 million country estate in Surrey, sprawled over 350 acres. Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, in fact, went public in his attack while giving the Press details of the estate, saying it was ten times (a reference to Zardari’s ten percent) larger than the fort in Lahore. The New York Times (NYT) did a series of articles on the estate and quoted extensively from family documents and bank papers. NYT reporter John Burns shared the details with journalist and author Shyam Bhatia, author of Goodbye Shehzadi, published this year by Roli Books. Bhatia, who was a close friend of Benazir from their Oxford days, even asked her about the estate, and he writes: “After Benazir’s death, Burns filled me in on the backdrop to his investigations. Zardari was in prison in Karachi when Burns showed up to ask for his reactions to the documents in his possession. Zardari studied them for 10 minutes before reacting. I don’t need to look at them, I have the originals: these are from our files, he told the NYT reporter. Burns then went to see Benazir, then the leader of the opposition. When he told her of the evidence he had collected and Zardari’s response, she broke down sobbing. Why are you doing this to me, she asked. After all that’s happened to my family, my father killed, my brothers killed…”

STORIES OF corruption are well-known in Pakistan and embellished versions are once again doing the rounds, now that Zardari — until now referred to as husband and widower — is officially the most important man in Pakistan. But the journey to the President’s house in Islamabad; the journey from Karachi to Surrey to New York and back to Pakistan, is as tainted as it is fortuitous.

Family man Zardari and Benazir with daughter Asifa in Geneva, 1995

Tainted not only because he and Benazir were legally convicted for money laundering by a Swiss court in 2003 — he was asked to return $11 million — but because his appeal against this judgement, which was to be taken up later this year, is history. Controversially, the Swiss authorities closed the case just as the PPP nominated him as their presidential candidate. For those interested in the details, they were convicted by Swiss judge Daniel Devaud in 2003. Commenting on the judgement, the Pakistan government’s British lawyer, Jeremy Carver, had told journalists that the judge had ordered “the restitution to the state of Pakistan of $11 million approximately that was still frozen in bank accounts in Switzerland. Judge Devaud has been asked subsequently if he had any doubts about it, the findings that he made. And he says absolutely no, it’s an open and shut case.”

But in Pakistan’s history — as turbulent and twisted in its turns and U-turns as its leaders — there is nothing that ever resembles an open and shut case. Not even if the charges go beyond financial impropriety to include lumpenism and murder. In the see-sawing that so marks Zardari’s life, he was first arrested in 1990, within two years of his marriage and shortly after Benazir’s first government was dismissed. Zardari was then charged with blackmail, for having allegedly tied a remotecontrolled bomb to the leg of UK-based Pakistani businessman Murtaza Bukhari and then ordering him into a bank to withdraw money from his account. True to form, with nothing being open and shut, the case was dropped in 1993, soon after Benazir returned to power for the second time. As Bhatia laconically puts it: “… and her husband was free from prison.

Benazir, it became obvious, was not above working by two sets of rules, the public and the familial. As the stories about Zardari circulated in Pakistan, many noted the irony of her failure to heed her father’s warnings about how those in power and their families needed to be extra careful when it came to money and lifestyle. Back in 1978, at Zulfikar’s request, Benazir had written to her brother, Murtaza, then in New York, stating: Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. The press here has said you are living lavishly in London which Papa knows you are not, but he wants me to remind you that your personal life must be most circumspect. No films, no extravagance, or people will say you are enjoying yourself while your father languishes in a death cell.”

Benazir had to make difficult emotional choices after she lost the father, who was clearly her life’s guiding light. In her autobiography, she wrote about the void, the loneliness she felt after his hanging and how this loneliness played a part in her saying yes to the nikaah with Zardari. Also well-known is the fact that much as Zardari was a political liability, he also gave her his complete support, and she often told friends how she admired him for being there for her. It is perhaps to Zardari’s credit that he was content playing second fiddle in a conservative country where, at the time of Benazir’s first tenure as prime minister, women were not allowed to open bank accounts without the consent of their husbands (she was often criticised by human rights lobbies for not changing this during her time in power). Zardari filled the vaccum her father’s death left in her. He seemed to fill in for Shahnawaz, her youngest brother, found dead in his flat in France two years before her marriage, and for her other sibling, Murtaza, whom she had drifted away from after Zia, the family tormentor, forced him out of Pakistan.

Mr President Zardari, flanked by daughters Bakhtawar (left) and Asifa, addresses MPs

THAT ZARDARI had made the transition from being financially acquisitive to being politically aware — if still not politically ambitious — was evident in 1994 when Murtaza decided to return to Pakistan. According to his daughter, Fatima Bhutto, Benazir kept trying to persuade him not to, saying she needed time to “settle” the cases pending against him — he was being tried on charges of terrorism. Fatima and Ghinwa (Murtaza’s wife) believe that Zardari was the driving force behind Benazir’s decisions.

Murtaza had little time for Zardari, whom he believed was not just a high-flying playboy but, more damagingly, was the one he blamed for the dilution of the PPP’s core ideology of fighting for social justice. Murtaza was ultimately to denounce his sister for converting what was once a grassroots, cadre-led party into a feudally-run, ten-percent-commission centric party; he would end up convincing even their mother, Nusrat Bhutto.

The Begum, around this time, wanted her son made chief minister of Sindh, but was utterly dismayed by the upshot when Benazir and Zardari responded by ousting her from the PPP chairpersonship. Zardari had by now clearly moved on from being the self-effacing spouse to playing political advisor — and one who expected to have his own way. For his part, Murtaza was to spend two years in Pakistan before he was gunned down in a Karachi square in September 1996. Few were surprised when Zardari was charged with the murder. How could the prime minister’s brother be killed in a police ‘encounter’, was the question all Pakistan asked, implying directly that it had political sanction. Everyone remarked on how quickly the street where Murtaza was killed had been wiped clean of all trace of his remains.

TODAY, AS the most powerful man in Pakistan, Zardari has few worries of cases against him being reopened, for he has already taken care of that. Few, however, believe that he will ever be able to be rid of his past. Says Najam Sethi, Editor-in-Chief, The Daily Times, “The past clings to him like a leech. But he has shown remarkable political skills in diminishing its burden in his quest for power.” These skills are evident from the fact that even the Swiss have closed the ‘open and shut case’ against him. At home, his wife did him a last great favour when negotiating her return to Pakistan, two months before her assassination — she bargained hard with Pervez Musharraf to put ink to paper on the controversial National Reconciliation Ordnance (NRO) that withdrew all outstanding cases against her, Zardari and their entire coterie.

Zardari’s skills also speak of the tutelage he obviously imbibed watching his steeped-inpolitics wife at work. Soon after he took over as the PPP co-chairman — in keeping with the South Asian love of elected dynasty, Benazir had formally willed him the party — Zardari, when asked about dynastic politics by this reporter, had famously said, “People in such positions get trained by the best masters. After all, Indiraji got trained by Nehru saab and he was the greatest master she could have had. She trained Rajiv and Sanjay and then Rajiv, in turn, trained Rahul and Priyanka. You have to give them their due for learning at the feet of the masters. Who can be a better master to Bilawal and my children than Mohtarma herself? They learned at her feet.”

Zardari, in fact, made more than just one reference to the Gandhis in that interview. After he took up the reins of the PPP, he was wont to liken his role to that of Sonia Gandhi, and when asked to elaborate, had said, “Sonia Gandhiji is a much bigger figure than I can ever be. She’s earned her spurs and has guided the largest democracy in the world. I am merely starting, so I can’t possibly hope or wish to compare myself to a great lady like that.” Famous last words many would say, for unlike Sonia Gandhi, who is only the president of the Congress party, Zardari has skillfully moved on to become the President of Pakistan.

So skillful has this part of his journey been that Zardari, as most would concede, has even managed to outsmart Nawaz Sharif, twice prime minister of Pakistan. With his eye never off the goal post, Zardari has proved himself wily enough to outstrip not only rivals but coalition colleagues.

But why the presidency? One reason is obvious: the president, in Pakistan, enjoys legal immunity. Perhaps not really a necessity for a man who had managed to even get around the Swiss but, as those close to him point out, in Pakistani politics, every single player has only grabbed as many powers for himself as he could, the way Musharraf did over the last nine years. Furthermore, Zardari could not have become prime minister for he doesn’t have the requisite graduation certificate without which he is barred from filing his nomination for a National Assembly seat. And then, as close associates confide, Zardari worries for his own safety. In the run-up to the presidential election, Zardari, it is said, had moved out of his Islamabad home into Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani’s official residence. Shaken by Benazir’s assassination, he worries for his own and his children’s safety.

Zardari won the election with a huge margin and his presidency is now being dressed up as being ‘democratic’ and ‘credible’. He is, among other things, Pakistan’s first elected president, equipped with the power to dismiss the government and the army chief and to make critical appointments. “It is up to Parliament to curtail my powers. The President will be subservient to Parliament,” he said at his first press conference after his swearing in on September 9. But, counters Imran Khan, president, Tehreek-e-Insaaf, “Zardari has put the country’s sovereignty at stake for his personal gains.” Adds former PPP senator and columnist Shafkat Mehmood, “Zardari is also heading a political party. The office of the President should be non-controversial and apolitical.”

Zardari has clearly taken warning from his wife’s experience — dismissed twice as prime minister, she often complained of being “in office but not in power”. Zardari intends to have no such complaints. If Nawaz Sharif now says he feels Zardari betrayed him, it is also because he didn’t realise the gameplan behind Zardari’s pressing forward on removing Musharraf, but not on reinstating the deposed judges, including former chief justice Iftekhar Chaudhary who, if reinstated, could even have moved to rescind the controversial NRO that saw the charges against Zardari being dropped.

Zardari has a controversial past but that’s not what’s bothering his countrymen; what alarms them is the extent of his powers. Says eminent Karachi-based political economist Akbar Zaidi, “No one cares a damn about corruption because in Pakistan everyone is corrupt. He is too powerful a person to become a president when we have a Parliamentary system in place. He is savvy and street smart and seems to have learnt very quickly. He is a democraticallyelected Musharraf.” Zaidi, however, continues, “It’s a wonder anyone would want this job having seen how Musharraf was discredited despite having been greeted as a saviour in 1999, after the coup. Zardari will have to deliver on being the saviour now.” Najam Sethi has similar views on the challenges that lie ahead for Zardari. “His foremost challenge is to fight the war against religious extremism. On that will depend stability at home and relations with India and America. On that will also depend the revival of the economy, which is desperately seeking billions of dollars in foreign aid and investment.”

Terrorism and the economic meltdown in Pakistan are urgent issues. The elections in February this year turned out to be a referendum against Musharraf, long decried as being too much of an American stooge. Zardari will have to walk the same tightrope. Pakistan needs American aid and therefore is seldom in a position to take a contrary line in the war on terror, precisely the inability that made Musharraf extremely unpopular. But, quite unlike Musharraf who had no political foes — he’d sent them all into exile — Zardari has a formidable one in Nawaz Sharif, waiting to see what he does about the deposed judiciary. He might spring a surprise and reinstate the chief justice but not many are taking bets on that one.

After nine years of the Musharraf dictatorship, Zardari’s PR machinery is working overtime to sell him to Pakistan as the Civilian President. He’s got a rare opportunity delivered right to his hand by a journey that had fate written all over it. What he does from here on will be of his own choosing. The final chapter of the bizarre but phenomenal journey of Asif Ali Zardari is still several twists away. •