Bhutto's widower wins presidency

[Satyagrahi]

Source: BBC News

Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has won Pakistan's presidential election, election officials say.
-snip-

Mr Zardari is one of Pakistan's most controversial politicians.

For years he has been hounded by allegations of massive corruption - although he has never been convicted.
-snip-

Many in Pakistan fear the country is facing a return to an old-style politics of confrontation at a time when urgent action is needed to improve the economy and deal with a raging Islamist insurgency.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7600917.stm

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Another brilliant move by the Bush administration. After backing a military dictator for years, they clearly had to strengthen democracy in Pakistan by throwing their support behind one of the country's most corrup... um... the politician clearly best suited for the job.


'Mr 10%'

Profile: Asif Ali Zardari
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4032997.stm

"In the week since Mr. Musharraf resigned, Mr. Zardari has emerged as the chief political force in Pakistan, and he appears to have the backing of the Bush administration as he moves toward the presidency.

Since Saturday, Mr. Zardari’s statements have increasingly coincided with Washington’s policies, particularly on the campaign against terrorism, the United States’ central concern here."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/world/asia/26pstan.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

Did the Bush administration put pressure on the Swiss government to drop the corruption investigation against Zardari? -

"In June, Pakistan’s attorney general notified the Swiss that he was no longer investigating Mr. Zardari, who leads one of the country’s largest political parties. The attorney general wrote that neither Mr. Zardari nor Ms. Bhutto had done anything illegal, and that the charges had been politically motivated, the Swiss prosecutor general, Daniel Zappelli, said Wednesday in a telephone interview. As a result, the Swiss dropped a money-laundering case against Mr. Zardari and released his assets.
-snip-

The Swiss action came as a shock to Daniel Devaud, the judge in Geneva who originally investigated the charges. He said it should not be interpreted as a sign of Mr. Zardari’s innocence.

“It would be very difficult to say that there is nothing in the files that shows there was possibly corruption going on after what I have seen in there,” Mr. Devaud said in a telephone interview. “After I heard what the general prosecutor said, I have the feeling we are talking about two different cases.”

Mr. Zardari and Ms. Bhutto were suspected of using Swiss bank accounts to launder millions of dollars, allegedly bribes paid by companies seeking customs inspection contracts in Pakistan in the 1990s. Ms. Bhutto, who was killed in December, and Mr. Zardari always denied the allegations, saying they were politically motivated. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/28/world/asia/28zardari.html?ref=asia&pagewanted=print

According to Ron Suskind's latest book, The Way of the World, the NSA got hold of all the details of Zardari's Swiss bank accounts:

"On the late afternoon of November 3, Bhutto makes phone calls to loved ones and close advisers to get her affairs in order.

The NSA is listening. They've been listening to her calls for months, including an earlier call she made to her son, Bilawal ... .

In that call, she told him about the secret bank accounts that hold the familys fortunes - huge reserves of mone that investigators have long suspected are ill-gotten.
-snip-

The NSA ... has harvested a number of portentous conversations of Benazir Bhutto's. This should help the United States play its under-the-table, cutthroat games more effectively. " Ron Suskind, The Way of the World, New York 2008, p.292

[YDogg]

1. this ought to be interesting

[dipsydoodle]

2. His mental condition

was one of the ways he ducked out of answering the corruption charges - dementia for starters.

That's all we need - someone with their finger on a nuclear button trying to remember why they're pressing it.

edit to add link : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/US_worried_about_unstable_Zardari/articleshow/3433695.cms

WASHINGTON: The United States is said to have serious concerns about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal coming under the control of its prospective president, Benazir Bhutto's widower Asif Ali Zardari, given reports of his dodgy mental condition.

Washington's worries reportedly rose last week following the disclosure of medical records indicating that as recently as last year, doctors hired by Zardari had diagnosed him with mental problems including dementia, depression and posttraumatic stress disorder. Much of it is said to be related to the eight years Zardari spent in prison as Musharraf's guest.

While Zardari's spokespersons say he has been cured, US officials, among them Congressman Pete Hoekstra, ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, have expressed concern about Zardari's mental-health history.

Hoekstra told Newsweek last week, ''The US wouldn't want that kind of person'' involved in a nuclear chain of command.

[ohio2007]

3. We all know where Benazir Bhutto stood on national issues related to the western provinces

and it cost her her life.

[Captain Hilts]

4. This is where the brain drain hurts Pakistan. All the smart folks are here, Canada and England. nt

[marshall]

5. The next target for the nuts

Has he been fitted for his bullet proof suit yet?

[Igel]

6. Like nobody saw that coming.

He out maneuvred Sharif. That's a good thing; but Zardari as president, simply a less-bad thing. Probably.

But 3 Supreme Court justices were restored to the court. Probably not a bad thing.

[JCMach1]

7. And on the Same Day, Britain unfreezes his funds in their banks

Which had been frozen due to some very real corruption charges.

No one should suspect that this isn't Pakistani politics as usual.

[ohio2007]

8. Zardari won 481 votes out of 702, far more than the 352 votes that would have guaranteed him victory

The president is elected by secret ballots in the national and four provincial assemblies.

Mr Zardari won 481 votes out of 702, far more than the 352 votes that would have guaranteed him victory, leaving his two rivals trailing far behind.

Mr Zardari spent years in prison while Gen Musharraf ruled Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto was assassinated at an election rally in December. Her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was hanged during the military dictatorship of President Ziaul Haq.

A further reminder of the dangers of public life in Pakistan came on Wednesday when gunmen attacked the motorcade of the prime minister. Two bullets hit his car, although he was not in it at the time officials say.

The other candidates for the presidency were Saeeduz Zaman Siddiqui, a former judge who had the backing of Mr Sharif, and Mushahid Hussain Sayed, who was nominated by the PML-Q party that supported Mr Musharraf.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7600917.stm

A Haliburten/Deibold election rigging no doubt but how did they fool so many of those fools into voting for somebody that will likely be blown away by the same conspirecy group that did in his wife.

Voices: Pakistan's presidential race
After a rancorous split in Pakistan's ruling coalition, the two main parties are supporting rival candidates in the presidential poll on 6 September. It is widely predicted that Asif Ali Zardari of the Pakistan People's Party and widower of Benazir Bhutto will win, succeeding Pervez Musharraf who resigned last month rather than face impeachment.

The president is elected by an electoral college made up of both houses in the national parliament and the four provincial assemblies. Here, Pakistanis give their views on the election.
snip

This is the right time to bring the country on the right path and to bring the derailed economy back on track. I fear that the collapse of the coalition at this stage would harm the country. Pakistan cannot afford political instability.

I would like to see the government and the president strengthen the parliament. There should be rule of law in the country. We need to provide quality education to the masses, because there is ignorance in the tribal areas which is causing religious extremism and militancy.
snip


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7591003.stm

[Satyagrahi]

9. Tariq Ali: Zardari is the worst possible choice for Pakistan

Asif Ali Zardari: the godfather as president
He may be a pliant partner for the west, but with his record of corruption, Zardari is the worst possible choice for Pakistan

Tariq Ali, Sunday September 07 2008

Asif Ali Zardari – singled out by fate to become Benazir Bhutto's husband and who, subsequently, did everything he could to prevent himself from being returned to obscurity – is about to become the new President of Pakistan. Oily-mouthed hangers-on, never in short supply in Pakistan, will orchestrate a few celebratory shows and the ready tongues of old cronies (some now appointed ambassadors to western capitals) will speak of how democracy has been enhanced. Zardari's close circle of friends, with whom he shared the spoils of power the last time around and who have remained loyal, refusing all inducements to turn state's evidence in the corrruption cases against him, will also be delighted. Small wonder then that definitions of democracy in Pakistan differ from person to person.
There will be no expressions of joy on the streets to mark the transference of power from a moth-eaten general to a worm-eaten politician. The affection felt in some quarters for the Bhutto family is non-transferable. If Benazir were still alive, Zardari would not have been given any official post. She had been considering two other senior politicians for the presidency. Had she been more democratically inclined she would never have treated her political party so scornfully, reducing it to the status of a family heirloom, bequeathed to her son, with her husband as the regent till the boy came of age.

This, and this alone, has aided Zardari's rise to the top. He was disliked by many of his wife's closest supporters in the People's Party (or the Bhutto Family Party, as it is referred to by disaffected members) even when she was alive. They blamed his greed and godfatherish behaviour to explain her fall from power on two previous occasions, which I always thought was slightly unfair. She knew. It was a joint enterprise. She was never one to regard politics alone as the consuming passion of her life and always envied the lifestyle and social behaviour of the very rich. And he was shameless in his endeavours to achieve that status.

Today, he is the second richest person in the country, with estates and bank accounts littered on many continents, including a mansion in Surrey worth several million. Many of Benazir's inner circle, sidelined by the new boss (Zardari did rub their noses in excrement by having his apolitical sister elected from Larkana, hitherto a pocket borough of the Bhutto family) actively hate him. Benazir's uncle, Mumtaz Bhutto (head of the clan) has sharply denounced him. Some even encourage the grotesque view that he was in some way responsible for her death. This is foolish. He is only trying to fulfill her legacy. He was certainly charged with ordering the murder of his brother-in-law, Murtaza Bhutto, when Benazir was prime minister, but the case was never tried. Characteristically, one of Zardari's first acts after his party's victory in the February polls was to appoint Shoaib Suddle, the senior police officer connected to the Murtaza Bhutto ambush and killing, as the boss of the Federal Intelligence Agency. Loyalty is always repaid in full.

In the country at large, his standing, always low, has sunk still further. The majority of Pakistan's 190 million citizens may be poor, illiterate or semi-literate, but their instincts are usually sound. An opinion poll carried out by the New America Foundation some months ago revealed Zardari's approval ratings at a low ebb – less than 14%. These figures confirm the view that he is the worst possible slice of Pakistan's crumbly nationhood. The people has had no say in his election, parliamentary cabals have already determined the result. I do not take too seriously the recent revelation that a psychiatrist had pronounced him suffering from acute dementia, incapable of recognising his children due to a chronic loss of memory. This was, as is known, designed for the courtroom had he been prosecuted in London or Geneva for large-scale money-laundering and corruption. All that is in abeyance now, since he has been elevated into a crucial figure in the "war on terror".

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/07/pakistan.usa