Benazir Bhutto: Leader With a Headstart

By Richard Curtiss

"‘What the multitude says is so, or soon will be so,' a sage once said. The multitude in Pakistan has spoken. And what a startling message it was."
—Saad Khairi, Saudi Gazette, Nov. 27, 1988.

The most important fact about Pakistan today is that this nation of 100 million people, a major US ally and a keystone of the Islamic world, has carried out free elections successfully, after a hiatus of 21 years. Democracy went on hold in Pakistan in 1977, after only 20 years of independence, when army chief of staff General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq deposed Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on charges Bhutto had rigged elections. Democracy descended into the deep freeze when Bhutto, a fiery left-wing populist who had emerged from the landed gentry of Sind province, was accused by the new military government of complicity in a provincial assassination plot which had led to the death of the intended victim's father. General Zia, who had assumed the presidency, did not commute the resulting death sentence and Bhutto was executed in 1979.

His daughter, Benazir, was only 26 at the time. A jeans-clad socialite known to friends as "Pinkie" because of her rosy complexion, she had been educated first at convent schools in Pakistan, then Radcliffe in Massachusetts, and finally Oxford University where she became president of the prestigious Oxford Union debating society. Her father's death transformed his family—two sons, two daughters and his Iranian descended widow, Nuzrat—both into revered symbols for the masses and enemies of the state. Benazir endured repeated arrests, illness accentuated by house arrest and deprivation of medical treatment, and exile in Europe. One brother was accused of complicity in terrorism. Another died mysteriously of poisoning in France. Benazir, devoted to the memory of her father, lived for one purpose—to vindicate his life and avenge his death by returning democracy to Pakistan.

Sets Sights on Zia

She had planned to be a journalist, but now she set her sights on President Zia, the man she blamed for her father's death. She had a razor sharp mind, a better grasp of issues than media people who interviewed her, a politician's ability to remember names and faces, and a serene public personality. She married a wealthy businessman, Asif Ali Zardari, on Dec. 17, 1987. Their son, Bilawal, was born Sept. 21, 1988. All this, and a new conservative style in dress and demeanor, was important in a society where, whatever her other accomplishments, a woman is also judged by her success as a wife and mother.

When she first returned to Pakistan in 1985, she expected the masses who had idolized her father to rise up against Zia. When they did not, instead of giving up she methodically set about conciliating and reuniting fragmented leaders of her father's Pakistan People's Party.

Problems among elements of his own government forced Zia last May to promise free elections. Lacking personal charisma of his own, and feeling increasingly threatened by his rivals, he banned political party participation to force candidates to participate only as individuals. When he tentatively set a date for elections just after the scheduled birth of Benazir Bhutto's child, he seemed to be changing the rules just to thwart her ambitions. If that didn't slow Benazir's campaign, Pakistanis surmised, the elections might be postponed or rigged.

Then Zia's sudden death in the still unexplained Aug. 17 crash of a military transport aircraft changed everything. Power passed to a 73-year-old caretaker president who, instead of postponing elections as he easily could have, promised they would be free, unfettered, and on schedule. The campaign was rough, even for a country where literacy levels are low and politicians assume slander based upon ethnic and religious prejudices will be effective. The 35-year-old female head of the Pakistan People's Party nevertheless drew ever larger and more enthusiastic crowds. "The rising sun, Benazir," massed supporters chanted at rallies, while soldiers and their commanders watched uneasily.

On Nov. 16, the Pakistan People's Party won a commanding 93 seats, twice as many as the runner-up religious party, in the 237-seat Parliament, while major political figures of the military government era failed to win seats for themselves. Although 20 seats in the 237-seat Parliament are "reserved" for women, both Benazir and Nuzrat Bhutto won open seats. In fact, Benazir won in three constituencies and her mother in two.

On Dec. 1, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan revoked the state of emergency decreed after Zia's death and invited the, in his words, "young, educated, cultured, and talented" Benazir Bhutto to form a government.

"As the Holy Quran says, put all your trust in those who are competent and deserving," he told the people of Pakistan. "Today is the day to hand over a sacred trust to those who deserve it."

Victory Vindicates Father

Benazir Bhutto's need for vengeance died in the plane crash. Only three months later her election fulfilled her desire to vindicate her father. "She's gone through a very traumatic time, but I don't find any bitterness in her," a long-time friend, Amina Piracha said. "She has a great capacity for work. I've seen her work solidly from seven in the morning to three or four the next morning, always fresh and collected."

Her work is cut out for her in a country with a 3 percent population growth rate, a dearth of natural resources, and ethnic tensions that translate into dangerous rivalries between major provincial power centers and within the central government. It was this, as much as any other factor, that led to her father's downfall. To date, however, his daughter has achieved an uneasy modus vivendi among contending politicians, mollified Pakistani entrepreneurs and a wary United States with ideas far removed from the Marxism of her father, earned toleration from army leaders who ran up foreign debts while tackling Pakistan's economic problems on their own, and ignited in the masses a rebirth of the hopes symbolized by her father.

Vindication for Islamic Civilization

In Asia, where clan rather than class plays a major role in domestic politics, Indira Gandhi, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, and Corazon Aquino all have preceded Benazir Bhutto as elected national leaders. She is, nevertheless, regarded with curiosity in the West as the first woman to head a modern Islamic state. That is in her favor at home, where educated Muslims are at pains to explain, and demonstrate through their support, that where Muslim women do not enjoy equal rights with men, it is not because the Quran, the Holy book of Islam, or the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad would have it so. Although the political program she represents has a modern and secular orientation, for educated men and women all over the Islamic world Benazir Bhutto's triumph is a vindication of Islamic civilization, past and present. They will be pulling for her, especially because she is a woman.