Pakistan The Undoing of Benazir

By EDWARD W. DESMOND ISLAMABAD

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 to victory -- an unprecedented achievement for a woman in an Islamic country.

All that striving turns out to have been the easy part. The Prime Minister, whose dramatic past and striking presence beguile Western admirers, is getting few favorable reviews in Pakistan. Her government has passed no legislation except a budget during its 14 months in power. Much of its energy has been squandered feuding with the opposition. 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 of Zia's. Privately, Bhutto's confidants justified the failed assault by arguing that Nawaz Sharif won only by rigging Punjab's elections, a view not supported by most impartial observers.

The 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 by using tax audits, cutting off state financing and exercising other federal powers to paralyze the industrial empire of Nawaz Sharif's family as well as the business interests of other I.D.A. backers. The bickering culminated in a no-confidence motion in parliament in November that Bhutto narrowly survived. Both parties offered as much as $1 million to any member who would switch sides, and resorted to guarding their erstwhile backers against temptation by placing them under police "protection."

The 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, Bhutto has expended much of her energy on disputes with President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, a cautious civil servant who was close to Zia.

Even then, the government could still have performed if Bhutto had chosen her Cabinet well. But she has shown little ability to pick talented -- not to say honest -- ministers. Important decisions often catch Bhutto by surprise, like Interior Minister Aitzaz Ahsan's move to harass and expel Christina Lamb, a British correspondent who wrote a controversial story about army officers plotting a coup that was embarrassing to the minister. Corruption scandals hit the papers almost daily, but Bhutto insists that the reports are mainly opposition propaganda, especially the attacks on her family. But one of her closest advisers is worried that the allegations are starting to stick. Says he: "If anything takes us down, it will be this perception of corruption and indecision."

Bhutto's apologists say she is learning, and point to her recent moves to cooperate with the President and back off from confrontation with the opposition. She can also feel secure in her stable relations with the army brass, which has so far stood aloof from the fray. Her ministers say they are working on legislation and feel their efforts to encourage the country's private sector will soon benefit the sagging economy. Then too, Bhutto has helped restore a strong, if incomplete, measure of freedom and democracy to a country that has been under military rule for most of its 43-year existence. Pakistanis are grateful for that, but as Bhutto is beginning to realize, she has to deliver good government as well.