TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/082090/0820005.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.5 KB | 133 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 53

PAKISTAN

"They Have Done It Again"


Backed by the armed forces, the President ousts Bhutto's
20-month-old government

By EDWARD W. DESMOND -- Reported by Anita Pratap/Islamabad


    Benazir Bhutto had always suspected that her term as
Pakistan's Prime Minister would end abruptly, probably at the
hands of the country's military. Even so, the news came as a
shock to Bhutto last week. At 4:30 Monday afternoon, President
Ghulam Ishaq Khan telephoned the Prime Minister at her official
residence in Islamabad to inform her that he was dismissing her
20-month-old government under Article 58 of the constitution
for "internal dissensions" and allegedly "horse trading for
personal gain," among other things. "I can't believe it," she
said as she hung up the phone. Shortly afterward she saw
soldiers take up positions around the building. To a group of
assembled friends she said, "They have done it again."

    In the capital, President Ishaq addressed a press conference
that began with a reading from the Koran: "Whatever evil
befalls you is the result of your own deeds." He then proceeded
to read a three-page indictment of the Bhutto government that
included allegations of unconstitutional activities, corruption
and mishandling of a violent political crisis in Sind province.

    Accordingly, said the President, he had dissolved the
National Assembly and declared a state of emergency. To run the
government as interim Prime Minister, he said, he had chosen
Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, 59 the leader of the opposition in the
dissolved assembly and an inveterate enemy of Bhutto's. Despite
that stern action, Ishaq stressed his commitment to democracy
and promised new elections on Oct. 24 as "an opportunity for
the people to restore their representatives' accountability."
Later that night the country's four provincial assemblies were
dissolved as well.

    For all the air of constitutional propriety surrounding
Ishaq's dismissal of Bhutto, his action marked a perilous
interruption of Pakistan's fragile democratic process. U.S.
diplomats, who were influential in soothing fears within the
army high command after Bhutto won the 1988 elections,
responded coolly to Ishaq's move but deemed it "consistent with
the constitution of Pakistan." The Bush Administration did not
appear ready to go along with a handful of U.S. Senators who
advocated a cutoff in Washington's almost $600 million-a-year
aid to Pakistan in response to what they called a
"quasi-military coup." But U.S. diplomats said the real test
would be Ishaq's ability to deliver on his promise of
elections, a commitment that previous Pakistani Presidents have
broken far more often than not.

    Bhutto began to fight back immediately. She declared that
her Pakistan People's Party would challenge Ishaq's action in
the courts on the grounds that it was "illegal and
unconstitutional" and based on "a pack of lies." She accused
the army of forcing the decision on Ishaq, who has close ties
to the military. Ishaq previously served as a Finance Minister
under General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan's military dictator
for 11 years and the man who had Bhutto's father, former Prime
Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, hanged in 1979. "It is the army
that is running the show," she charged at a press conference
in Karachi. Bhutto also announced that her party would
participate in the October elections. Speaking with the same
fiery tenacity that saw her through seven years of exile and
imprisonment under Zia, she vowed, "We will win with a sweeping
majority again."

    She may be blocked, however, in her efforts to regain her
popular support. In Islamabad, interim Prime Minister Jatoi
announced that his top priorities were preparing for the
elections and taking steps to guarantee that "anyone found
involved in corruption is not spared." While soldiers guarded
government offices to ensure that no incriminating papers would
be removed, Bhutto, her husband Asif Zardari and several of
their close associates were told not to leave the country.

    Ishaq made his move against Bhutto with the full knowledge
that her popularity was in sharp decline. A chief reason: the
widespread belief that many members of her government, as well
as her husband, had made enormous amounts of money by taking
advantage of their positions. Most of her Cabinet members, for
example, had secured extremely lucrative commercial and
industrial licenses. Though Bhutto has denied such charges,
Ishaq challenged her claims, insisting that "despite being
subject to widespread public condemnation, the government failed
to take appropriate action."

    Bhutto's popularity has also slipped in recent months
because of the chaos in the southern province of Sind, where
635 people have died so far this year in a conflict between
native Sindhis and mohajirs, the Muslims from India who settled
in Sind at the time of the partition of British India in 1947,
and their descendants. Bhutto's party controlled the provincial
government but was unable to stop the violence that has all but
paralyzed Karachi, the country's largest city and main port.

    Despairing of a political settlement, the army repeatedly
asked Bhutto for the constitutional authority to go in and
disarm both the Sindhis and the mohajirs, but she refused,
fearing damage to her base of support within the Sindhi
community. Combined with the tension with India over Kashmir
that still threatens war, the Sind crisis created a security
dilemma that the army found intolerable -- and may have been
the single most important factor in driving the generals to
promote Ishaq's action. Says Mushahid Hussain, a leading
political analyst: "The army wanted to clear up Sind fast. It
did not want to fight on two fronts."

    Throughout her 20 months in office, Bhutto was guilty of
colossal political blundering. Reluctant to compromise or even
negotiate, she took on practically every real and potential
adversary to her weak government. With the army she meddled in
promotions. In Punjab province she sponsored an unsuccessful
campaign to bribe enough opposition politicians to unseat her
archrival, chief minister Nawaz Sharif. In Sind she failed to
honor a series of promises to her erstwhile ally, the Mohajir
Qaumi Movement, thereby leading to the current turmoil in the
province. In the end, Bhutto's helter-skelter governance gave
the people she viewed as enemies the grounds they needed to
unseat her.