ISLAMABAD: Pakistan declared a state of emergency following a political crisis. The Government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was dismissed Aug 6 by the President of Pakistan, who accused her administration of corruption, nepotism and other acts “in contravention of the Constitution and the law.”

A caretaker Government led by Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, a former member of Ms. Bhutto’s party who had gone over to the parliamentary opposition, was sworn into office.

In a somber news conference in the room in the Presidential Palace where Ms. Bhutto took the oath of office as Prime Minister in a glittering ceremony 20 months ago, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan said that the National Assembly, Pakistan’s Parliament, “had lost the confidence of the people.”

President Ishaq Khan said new elections would be held on Oct.24. The Pakistani Constitution empowers the President to name and dismiss governments at his sole discretion if in his judgment the Government is unable to carry out its duties.

But Ms. Bhutto, the first woman to head a modern Islamic state, called the action “illegal and unconstitutional.” At a news conference soon after dismissal, she asserted that her opponents were trying to keep her from winning the next election, but that she believed she had the popular support to return to power.

She said her Pakistan People’s Party may challenge the President in court, although the grounds for such a challenge were not specified.

“I don’t feel betrayed by the President,” she said. “I believe there were other elements that wanted me out.”

Pakistan’s top military officers were present at the swearing-in of the caretaker Government. Pakistanis assume that the ousting of Ms. Bhutto could not have taken place without army support, if not instigation. But Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, the army commander, said before the ceremony that the military had not been in politics recently and would remain out of government in the future.

Among the uncertainties resulting from the surprise announcement was the possibility of an eruption in Sind Province, Ms. Bhutto’s home territory. Whether Sindh is loyal to her family will accept her ouster seems to hinge on how willing they are to give another government the opportunity to deal with the violence that has racked the province in recent years. Mr. Jatoi, the new Prime Minister, is also a Sindhi, but he lost his seat in the province in the 1988 (Continued on Page 13) election. He later picked up a seat in neighboring Punjab province and took his place in the National Assembly under the banner of his small National Peoples Party, which he formed after breaking with Ms. Bhutto in 1986.

Focus on a Father-in-Law

In leveling corruption charges, the President alluded to numerous officials in Ms. Bhutto’s circle, and especially to her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, and his father, Hakim Ali Zardari. Reports in the Pakistani press have said he has made a fortune on property deals while holding high Government position.

A leading political commentator, Ghani Eirabie, said in an interview that her father-in-law had long been regarded as a “crook,” and that Mrs. Bhutto’s gravest mistake may have been agreeing to an arranged manage with the wrong family

Other accusations leveled by the President involve Ms, Bhutto’s management of the national Government. The President said she had been involved in the paying of illegal “inducements” to buy parliamentary or other partial support. He-said she had ridiculed the national judiciary and the Senate and had” wild fully undermined and impaired” the workings of provincial governments

Mr. Ishaq Khan also held Mrs. Bhutto responsible for failing to protect Pakistanis from “rural and urban violence” and for allowing Sind province to sink into near civil war between families that trace their roots in the province for many generations, and those who arrived as, or are descended from, Muslims who immigrated to Pakistan with the partition of British India in 1947.

Unlike the practice in other democracies, Ms. Bhutto was dismissed without either the benefit of an impartial investigation or the right to fight a no-confidence motion in the national Parliament.

Ms.Bhutto who’s Pakistan People’s Party took office December 1988, enjoyed huge popular support and sympathy at the beginning. But she disappointed many of her early supporters.

Her rise to power at the age of 35 had-been swift. The elections that swept her to of ice took place three months after he death in a plane crash of Gen Mohammad Zia-ul-Hag, who had led a military Government of Pakistan for eight years-and who  a non-partisan but parliament for the last two his life.

(New York Time)

Article extracted from this publication >> August 10, 1990