Word: zia
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...suspension of martial law marked the latest step in a drawn-out effort to restore democracy in Pakistan. In December 1984, Zia used the favorable results of a vaguely worded referendum as grounds to declare himself President for a five-year term. Last February he called elections for the suspended Parliament. All candidates were required to run as independents, but according to most observers, the balloting was fair...
After returning from exile last April, Opposition Leader Benazir Bhutto, 33, basked in the welcoming cheers of millions of her fellow Pakistanis. Buoyed by her reception, she demanded that the government of President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq and Prime Minister Mohammed Khan Junejo call new legislative elections this year. The alternative, she warned, would be an uprising by her followers and the overthrow of the government...
...work out quite that way. Just six months after her triumphant return, Bhutto last week announced that she was dropping her campaign for immediate elections. Eventually, she still hopes to oust Zia, the general who overthrew her father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in a 1977 coup and whose government executed him two years later...
Most important, thousands of ordinary Pakistanis, who had cheered her arrival last spring, remained silent after her arrest, apparently out of apathy. She is charismatic enough to draw crowds but not strong enough to summon her countrymen to the barricades. This fact was not lost on Zia, who has never been particularly popular but has given the country a decade of relative stability...
...result of the opposition infighting is that Zia will probably not feel obliged to call elections until 1990, when the term of the present Parliament expires. Though she may still rule Pakistan someday, Benazir Bhutto has learned that for a civilian politician in her fractious country, there is no shortcut to power...