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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 Apr. - 5 May 1999 Issue No. 427 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 Apr. - 5 May 1999 Issue No. 427
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Focus Special Travel Sports People Features Living Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Bonnie and Clyde in Karachi
By Eqbal Ahmad
On 15 April, the Ehtesab (accountability) bench of Punjab High Court convicted Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Zardari of taking $4.3 million in kickbacks from the Société Générale de Surveillance (SGS), a Swiss company to which, as Pakistan's prime minister in 1994, Bhutto had awarded a contract worth over $137 million. Zardari is alleged to have received the payment -- 6 per cent of the contracted sum -- through a complicated laundering arrangement.
The court held that Bhutto had access to the account on which the money was deposited, and used it to make a payment of 92,000 sterling for the purchase of a necklace. The judges handed out an awesome set of punishments to the former prime minister and her spouse: they are not only barred from holding public office, but also face five years in prison, a fine of $8.6 million, and confiscation of properties worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
It is too soon to predict with any accuracy the political impact of Benazir Bhutto's conviction on bribery charges. Pakistan's former prime minister and her husband are presently appealing to the Supreme Court to overturn the judgement.
Their defence lawyers hope that the appeal court will recognise the questionable antecedents of the Ehtesab bench, as well as an avalanche of pre-trial government propaganda against the defendants, procedural flaws in the conduct of the trial and possible prejudice on the part of the presiding judge, whose father voted to convict Z.A. Bhutto of the murder charge for which he was hanged in 1979. It may take the Supreme Court months to decide on the appeal.
Although it is true that during their last stint in office Benazir and her husband Zardari gained a general reputation as a kind of legalised Bonnie and Clyde team, the appearance of justice in the present case has nevertheless been severely marred both by the government's amendments of convenience to the Ehtesab Act, and by its propaganda campaign against the accused.
The law on accountability, as originally passed by the interim government in 1997, applied retrospectively from 1988, and conferred full investigative powers in the chief Ehtesab commissioner, an independent official. On assuming the office of prime minister in February 1998, Nawaz Sharif amended the law so that it applied only from 1990 -- thus usefully excluding the period during which he had himself served as the financially controversial chief minister of Punjab.
Moreover, he deprived the sitting Ehtesab commissioner of his powers, appointing in his place one of his cronies, Senator Saifur Rahman. With the cooperation of the Information Ministry which is led by another of Sharif's favourites, Rahman promptly embarked upon a vigorous and protracted propaganda campaign against Bhutto and her husband.
In effect, the two were tried and convicted by the official media long before the case ever came to court. I am not intimately familiar with Pakistani law and judicial practice, but I can say with reasonable certainty that had something similar occurred in the United States, a reputable American judge would have dismissed the case against Benazir Bhutto outright, on the grounds of unfair pre-trial publicity.
Thus, what could have been a precedent-setting corruption case was reduced to a deeply flawed political witch hunt. Vested interests may have been served, but sadly, the government's conduct has helped neither the judicial nor the political process. In addition, it has brought into bad repute the idea of "accountability", which had begun to take hold in Pakistan, thanks to reformist pressures from civil society.
Benazir Bhutto's disqualification from politics, and even more seriously, her incarceration, as a result of this one-sided pursuit of accountability, will certainly do great harm to Pakistan and its nascent parliamentary system. A primary political gain that Pakistan had made during the last decade was the emergence of a two-party system, an essential attribute of stable parliamentary democracy. The down side to this advance was that both the major parties are personality-oriented, function undemocratically, and are sorely lacking in both institutional structures and a regular turnover of leaders and cadres. Take away the leader and, in the absence of a dynastic heir, almost every time, the party will crumble.
This may well yet be the fate of the Pakistan Peoples Party, if Benazir Bhutto is removed from the scene. The chairperson-for-life has no adult heir, no potential successor, nor even a rival capable of picking up the pieces.
The sole beneficiary of her misfortune will be Nawaz Sharif, who already wields more power than a prime minister should. Under his leadership, the Muslim League may soon come to resemble the Indian National Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru from 1948 to 1964, when it constituted a virtual one-party state within a formal parliamentary system.
Unlike Nehru, however, Nawaz Sharif is not a dedicated liberal, nor a secular democrat. (Under a pseudonym, Nehru once wrote a trenchant critique of himself that remains the finest attack ever delivered against him. On another occasion as prime minister he quietly visited an opposition leader and gave him an advance "glance" at the government's budget, along with his own critique of it, adding: "Don't spare us".) Sharif is unlikely to promote opposition to himself, as Nehru used to do. Nor is he likely to seek progress through enlightened legislation and policies. His instincts are absolutist and his outlook conservative, and he will doubtless seek to harden the authoritarian and theocratic tissues of state and society. Without a viable opposition, he will also have more of a free hand than may be good for the country.
Ethnic politics, meanwhile, may witness a renaissance if Bhutto is sent to prison. Her support in Sindh -- Pakistan's second largest province -- remains solid, and the feeling there is that Punjab is out to destroy Sindh's national leadership potential.
It is significant therefore that, speaking recently from London, she should have called on Sindhis alone to protest the court's verdict. And they did, responding on 17 April with virtual unanimity. The province's 45 million people all but stopped work for a day. Benazir Bhutto, meanwhile, is still abroad and has wisely decided to stay away until the Supreme Court has ruled on the appeal. She is presently in London and her children are in Dubai. Zardari, for his part, is already in jail, facing multiple charges, including complicity in the murder of Murtaza Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali's eldest son.
For now Mian Nawaz Sharif is king. But his career may yet turn out to be closer to that of Z.A. Bhutto than to that of Nehru. Bhutto manoeuvred himself into a position of unchallenged power, tamed the armed forces, threw his opponents in jail, provoked insurrection in Baluchistan, and united the disparate opposition groups on an anti-Bhutto platform. History tells how tragically harmful this was for the country -- and for Bhutto himself, too.
