Word: bhutto
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Benazir Bhutto was one of the best political stories of the 1980s. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, she rallied from imprisonment and exile to return to Pakistan in 1986 and confront General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, the country's military ruler and the man who executed her father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. When Zia's death in a mysterious plane crash in 1988 opened the way for Pakistan's first regular elections in a decade, Bhutto, only 35 and the mother of a two-month-old son, led her father's Pakistan People's Party through a raucous campaign...
...Worse yet, her Cabinet stinks with corruption scandals, including allegations that her husband Asif Ali Zardari and father-in-law Hakim Ali Zardari, chairman of the parliamentary public- accounts committee, have taken advantage of their position to collect kickbacks on government contracts. Says Maleeha Lodi, a journalist close to Bhutto: "This government has lost the moral high ground. She is at grave risk politically...
...While Bhutto still adheres to the liberal democratic ideals that many Pakistanis found so attractive in the 1988 election, her judgment has often been carried away by the vengeful currents of Pakistani politics, especially the fury of those in her People's Party who were cruelly oppressed under Zia. Among the party's first acts after coming to power was a campaign to bribe and threaten legislators in Punjab, an opposition-ruled province where more than 60% of Pakistanis live. The goal: to overthrow Bhutto's nemesis, Mian Nawaz Sharif, Punjab's chief minister, a wealthy industrialist and a crony...
...opposition Islamic Democratic Alliance has proved to be no more scrupulous, striking back with a bribery operation against a People's Party provincial government and leveling wild charges against Bhutto. Example: by emphasizing better relations with New Delhi, she was "selling out" to India. Opposition politicians have not been above a catty whispering campaign, asking how a mother with her second child due any day can possibly be a suitable Prime Minister. Nawaz Sharif has done more than talk. He used his police to arrest and lodge questionable cases against People's Party politicians in Punjab. Bhutto's government countered...
...battles with Nawaz Sharif might not have cost Bhutto so much support if her government had compiled a solid record of accomplishment during the past year. At first Bhutto complained that her government could not pass legislation because the upper house of parliament was almost entirely pro- I.D.A. But that excuse grew thin when the People's Party did not even try to introduce bills that might prove acceptable to all parties. Considering the extravagant promises of the party manifesto and Pakistan's abysmal poverty and appalling 77% illiteracy rate, there is little time to waste. To make matters worse...