THE night before Benazir Bhutto’s tragic assassination, her husband, Asif Ali
Zardari, had begged her on the phone to stop holding election rallies and
let him take her place.
“She had just addressed this public meeting in Peshawar where they’d caught
this suicide bomber,” he said. “I told her, for God’s sake be careful, but
she said, ‘What can I do? I have to go and meet my people.’ I pleaded with
her: you stay home and I’ll go do the rallies. You’re the mother.
“I always used to tell her that as long as the queen bee is alive we workers
will always live . . . but I guess it wasn’t so . . .”
His voice trailed off. That telephone call was to be the couple’s last
conversation.
“It was such a shock,” he said. “After she survived the Karachi bus bombing
[on her return from eight years in exile last October], we were all of the
opinion that she was Superwoman and could survive anything, but it turns out
she wasn’t.”
Zardari was speaking at Bhutto’s ancestral home in Naudero, in rural Sindh
province, where he flew with her body nine days ago to bury her in the
mausoleum that she had built for her father and brothers, all of whom have
been killed.
Every day since then, thousands of people have arrived by truck, by donkey
cart or on foot to pray and toss fresh rose petals on the mounds covering
the tombs.
On the dusty streets outside, colourful banners still hang from October
proclaiming “Welcome Benazir”. Many mourners make their way to the Bhutto
house, where, from 10 in the morning until 10 at night, Zardari receives
condolences, as he will do for 40 days.
Some are from Bhutto’s long-term associates or friends; others say they saw
her as a mother or a sister. Often the women collapse wailing, an outpouring
of emotion that has led to comparisons with the death of Diana, Princess of
Wales.
Shuffled in and out of meetings by three attractive female handlers who
previously worked for Bhutto, Zardari said that he had yet to come to terms
with what had happened.
Not only has he lost a wife but, by taking over her Pakistan People’s party
(PPP), he has also become the country’s number one assassination target.
“I don’t know how I feel,” he said. “Numb, lost, all of the above.”
The couple were married for 20 years, although less than half that time was
spent together because of his years in jail on charges ranging from
corruption to conspiracy to murder her brother.
Zardari, 51, had been at home in Dubai with their three teenage children on
the evening of December 27 when he heard the news that his 54-year-old wife
had been shot while leaving a rally in Rawalpindi.
“I’d been watching TV with my son when I got the call from the car to say
something had happened to her,” he recalled. “I said, rush her to hospital,
and called my contacts to arrange a plane for me and the kids to leave. But
while I was doing that, the kids had turned on the news and saw she was
dead, before I could tell them anything.
“Of course we had discussed the risks, but it was never a reality. It was only
when I saw her will that it really brought it home.”
He explained that the document read last Sunday to the central committee of
the PPP, naming him as her successor, was only her political will.
“There’s this whole hand-written document in which she even says who to give
her clothes and shoes to - which servant to give what to - the trust she
wanted set up and how it should be run.”
Zardari had been unaware that she had drawn it up. “The day her remains came
to Naudero a person came from Dubai and said, ‘I have this document that
madam left with me’.”
The will was dated October 16, two days before Bhutto had returned to
Pakistan. “That was the day she’d been warned not to go back and she wrote
that letter to President [Pervez] Musharraf showing her apprehensions about
certain people.”
The message that she left for the party asked for the leadership to pass to
Zardari until it can be run by their son Bilawal. Aged only 19, Bilawal will
return to Christ Church, Oxford, this week for his second term as an
undergraduate and has freely admitted that he was more interested in
Facebook and movies than politics. It is his youngest sister Asifa, 14, who
has always said that she wants to follow in her mother’s footsteps to be
prime minister.
As the Bhutto mausoleum highlights, it is a mantle that comes with a high
risk. “It’s very hard as a father,” said Zardari.
“But how can you stop a tradition where so many people have knowingly given
their lives as she did?
“Of course I worry about him,” he said of Bilawal. “But we’ll be careful with
him, keep him safe. And he is of a stronger DNA than I am.”
He is convinced that Bilawal will grow into the job as Benazir - known as Bibi
- did after her father, the former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was
ousted in a military coup in 1977 and hanged two years later.
While Bilawal finishes his studies and reaches the age of 25 (as he must to
contest elections in Pakistan), Zardari will run the PPP. “I could have just
said: sorry, I need to go back to Dubai with my children and can’t take any
more chances,” he said. “But I accepted because she thought I had the heart
and courage to stand against this tragedy - not my intellect, I don’t think
she was impressed by that.”
He admits that he is a controversial figure clouded by corruption allegations
that often see him referred to as “Mr Ten Percent”. But he points out that
he has spent 11 years in jail on charges of which he was never convicted and
insists that he is the victim of a long-term smear campaign.
“The day I got engaged to her was when they planned this move. They didn’t
want to give the PPP two leaders so they planned this negative image. Look,
this is a country where the chief justice gets arrested, gets criminal
charges put on him, gets reinstated, then gets arrested again. Now after
Benazir’s death, the world knows the lengths [to which] the establishment of
Pakistan will go.”
Asked if he denied ever taking kickbacks on government contracts, he retorted:
“Why would I do it? If one was to do that then one would stay with them
because then there wouldn’t be any inquisitions or accountability processes.
They were always offering me deals. If money was what I was interested in,
all I had to do was say: thank you Bibi, I’m off. And I could have had
whatever I wanted.”
He insists that if the party wins a majority in next month’s elections, he
will not take a cabinet post. Instead, he says he sees himself as “a Sonia
Gandhi advisory figure but without the seat in parliament” - a reference to
the behind-the-scenes influence of the widow of Rajiv Gandhi, the former
Indian prime minister, as head of the ruling Congress party.
Once known as a polo-loving womaniser, Zardari seems a changed man to PPP
members, sobered by his loss and eager to listen to advice. When his best
friend took him to the mausoleum late last Thursday night after the crowds
had gone, he wept floods of tears.
“One has to go on with her mission,” he said. “She was too dear and too close
- we can’t let her life be wasted in vain.”
Zardari has no doubt who he thinks is behind his wife’s assassination. He
referred to an e-mail she sent to Mark Siegel, a Wash-ington lobbyist, which
was to be read in the event of her death and which pointed the finger
directly at Musharraf. “We’ve taken that as her last message. She talks
about it from her grave and it’s up to the world to listen.”
He believes that Britain and the United States should shoulder the blame
because of their role in mediating the deal between Bhutto and Musharraf by
which she returned to Pakistan.
“She came back here on sovereign guarantees,” he said. “There were other
countries involved; they should take responsibility for leading her back
into this without proper protection.”
Zardari is convinced that Musharraf was never serious about working with
Bhutto. “I think that was proven the first day she landed,” he said.
“Our party security wing saved her that day, not the police. It was the same
with the man in Peshawar.
“Benazir wrote to Musharraf before the first bomb attack,” he added. “Why
didn’t he act on that? She’d written endless letters asking for better
security. Where was the response?”
Bhutto would summon her closest aides into the garden to inform them of her
following day’s programme because she was convinced that the government was
bugging her house.
It is Zardari who must now oversee the PPP campaign for elections which have
been delayed from this Tuesday to February 18. This is no easy task from a
remote house in a dusty village with no internet and sporadic electricity.
Newspapers arrive a day late.
The nationwide anger makes it likely that the PPP will win a big majority and
for that reason Zardari fears the regime will rig the elections or come up
with another excuse for a delay. “We don’t have any faith that there will be
elections,” he said. “They might make another huge incident. Anyone could be
a target.”
For a moment he looks terrified.
Video: Asif Zardardi names
his son as head of the PPP
Video: Bilawal Bhutto
speaks about succeeding his mother Benazir
Benazir was in an armour plated vehicle, yet foolishly chose to stand up and expose herself.
Zardari was the main culprit in Bhitto's downfall. He was accused of corruption and lining his own pockets when his wife was in power. Now he is using her death as a vehicle for not only getting back into politics, but also putting his own son into the limelight.
Hamad Lone, London, England
No one deserves such an untimely and unfortunate violent death. May BB rest in peace.
The Western media has, however, been eulogizing her as a fallen angel. Mr. Zardari's was charitably called "Mr. Five Percent" during BB's 1st term. His elevation to "Mr. Ten Percent" during her 2nd term is legendary.
Yesterday's story in the NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/weekinreview/06burns.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1&ref=world)
has a different account of his admission regarding the corruption.
Your recent story (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3118974.ece) states that the Bhutto family's three branches own 30000-40000 acres of land around Larkana. This when Mr. Z. A. Bhutto's supposed land reforms limited individual land ownership to 500 acres of irrigated or 1000 acres of unirrigated land.
It is high time these failed leaders and feudals gave up their dynastic claim to the People's Party and the country, and return them to the rightful owners - the people of Pakistan
Farid Syed, Sukkur, Karachi
The standard of reporting of Pakistani affairs in the Times over the last few weeks has been some of the most onsided - ever.
Christina Lamb is at best remarkably naive in her 'rose tinted view" of th PPP, the rest of us all know that they are as corrupt as they come in Pakistan.
Come on Times!, lets have some hard nosed objective reporting over Pakistan for a change.
W.A.Yaqub, Birmingham, UK
The sad demise of Mrs. Zardari is a tragic event in the life of a the family. But as somebody rightly put it "her worries are over". It is understandable that her well-wishers and feudal subjects are shedding tears on her untimely departure. However, I wonder if anybody is shedding tears about the plight of the 160 wretched millions of this unfortunate country without electricity, water or other items of daily use. What steps are being taken and by whom to ensure that the crumbling infranstucture of this nation doesnt come crashing down and leaves the free world with a whole lot more loose extremists. For the record, the departed and her unwholesome husband failed miserably on this account when they had the opportunity to do their duty. May her soul rest in peace and the living in Pakistan see better days.
Z. Sultan, Bonn,
The driver of the vehicle Benazir was riding was driven by a jail crony of Asif Zardari, all the close guards were also his cronies . It would be worthwhile to check why the driver kept her vehicle stationary for such a long time in an exposed position and what were the ring of 30 personal guards of Zardari doing when the killer approached and fired. Those inside the vehicle riding with Benazir should also be check for their roles in letting her stand up in face of grave threats. To me it looks as many are involved ?
M.S.Javed, Chatham, UK