Zardari voted as Pakistan president for second time
ISLAMABAD: Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Pakistan’s slain first female leader Benazir Bhutto, was voted in as president for a second time Saturday, after elections marred by rigging claims. Zardari was voted in with 411 votes to 181 for the opposition-backed candidate, the Election Commission of Pakistan announced after tallying the votes by national MPs, provincial MPs and senators.
Lawmakers of Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) voted Zardari into the largely ceremonial post, backed by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party in an alliance forged after the Feb 8 polls. Under the terms of the coalition pact, which also includes a handful of smaller parties, PML-N’s Shehbaz Sharif was sworn in as prime minister on Monday. Zardari is expected to be sworn in at a ceremony on Sunday.
Pakistan’s Feb 8 election was tainted by allegations of pre-poll rigging and vote tampering, with former prime minister Imran Khan jailed and barred from contesting and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party targeted by arrests and censorship, with members forced to stand as independents. They defied expectations to win more seats than any other party last month, but fell far short of the majority needed to govern — clearing the way for the alliance between PML-N and PPP.
However, PTI claim a polling day mobile internet blackout and a massive delay in results were used to cover up nationwide rigging preventing their landslide victory. PTI nominated Mehmood Khan Achakzai, a lawmaker from the western city of Quetta, as their presidential candidate. Despite a reputation as “Mr Ten Percent” – the alleged cut he took for rubberstamping contracts – Zardari was previously boosted to the presidential office in 2008 on a sympathy vote following the gun and bomb assassination of Benazir Bhutto as she campaigned for re-election.
Initially a background character as Bhutto’s consort, Zardari was stained by a bevy of corruption and other allegations, including absurd kidnapping plots and taking kickbacks lavished on hoards of jewelry. Between 2008 and 2013, he ushered in constitutional reforms rolling back presidential powers, and the 68-year-old’s second term will see him steer a largely ceremonial office.
He has spent more than 11 years in jail, a long time even by the standards of Pakistani politicians, with a wheeler-dealer’s talent for bouncing back after scandals. Back in 2009, the New York Times said he had a knack for “artful dodging” – “maneuvering himself out of the tight spots he gets himself into”.
‘Polo playboy’
Zardari was born in 1955 into a land-owning family from the southern province of Sindh. “As a child, I was spoilt by my parents as an only son,” he said in a 2000 interview with The Guardian newspaper. “They indulged my every whim.” He expressed only limited political ambitions as a young man — losing a 1983 local government election. It was his 1987 arranged marriage with PPP leader Bhutto that earned him a spot in the political limelight. Their union — brokered by Bhutto’s mother — was considered an unlikely pairing for a leader-in-waiting from one of Pakistan’s major political dynasties.
Bhutto was an Oxford and Harvard graduate driven by the desire to oust then-president Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, who forced her father from the prime minister’s office and had him executed. Zardari was a university dropout with a reputation for brawling, partying and romancing women at a private disco in his family home.
On the eve of their wedding, Bhutto’s team issued a formal statement denying he was “a playboy who plays polo by day and frequents discos at night”. Their nuptial celebrations were dubbed the “people’s wedding” — doubling as a political rally in the megacity of Karachi, where a crowd of 100,000 fervently chanted PPP slogans. Initially, Zardari pledged to keep out of politics.
Bhutto served as prime minister from 1988 to 1990 – the first woman to head a democratic government in a Muslim country — and again from 1993 to 1996. PPP insiders regarded Zardari as a liability, considering him likely to embarrass her leadership. Their fears were perhaps well-founded. In 1990, he was embroiled in accusations of an absurd plot to extort a businessman by tying a bomb to his leg.