The Downfall Of Banazir Bhutto -- Ex-Prime Minister: Shattered Dream, Corruption Claims

LONDON - The setting had all the makings of a scene from ``Casablanca.'' But the meeting in May at Karachi's century-old Sind Club offered a foreshadowing of what the future held for one of Asia's youngest and best-known rulers.

Over the drone of ceiling fans that barely cut Karachi's heat, a man whispered: ``Here's the smoking gun.

``Believe me, Benazir is finished. This is what's going to bury her.''

The man, a lawyer, then handed a Los Angeles Times reporter a thick stack of documents that he said would spell the end of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's 20-month reign. It appears he may well have been right.

The lawyer was a major strategist for opposition leader Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, who was named caretaker prime minister last week when Bhutto's entire government was fired for corruption and incompetence. The documents that the lawyer had shown to a reporter helped build Pakistani President Ghulam Ishaq Khan's case against the 37-year-old prime minister, her party, her government and her family.

Those documents and hundreds more like them are likely to do even more damage to a woman who became a charismatic symbol of freedom abroad but a symbol of expectations unfulfilled and promises broken in her own impoverished country of 107 million.

``All scandals will be looked into,'' said the new commerce minister, Elahi Bakhsh Soomro, last week in flagging the caretaker government's intention to build a case of corruption against Bhutto's ruling family and friends - a campaign that has the endorsement of Pakistan's armed forces. ``All deals and deeds of the government-controlled corporations will be examined thoroughly.''

Analysts in Islamabad say they expect the interim government to try to build a case that is so strong it will prevent Bhutto from running in elections scheduled for Oct. 24.

The government last Sunday arrested at least eight people, including two associates of Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari.

Before that, Bhutto said she suspected that the government would indeed try to build a case against her. When asked whether she will be given a chance to reclaim her position, she told reporters: ``I doubt it. I doubt it. I don't believe that they can face me politically. They couldn't face me politically yesterday, and they can't face me politically today.''

She attempted to characterize the entire inquiry as a political witch hunt aimed solely at her, adding, ``We have not done injustice to anyone.''

But the documents hint at a mountain of corruption, patronage, favoritism and nepotism during Bhutto's administration. Although no cases of corruption have been filed or even suggested against Bhutto herself, the documents do provide ample evidence that several of her senior Cabinet ministers and ruling-party leaders attempted to use their positions to enrich themselves or the party.

What is more, allegations against Bhutto's husband, Zardari, and his family, have been irrepressible. Commonly referred to in the international media as ``Mr. 10 Percent'' - a transparent reference to commission-taking - Zardari has filed a number of libel cases against Pakistani and foreign newspapers. The cases are pending.

These cases and more are expected to get an airing in the weeks ahead. But what is already clear from the documents that Jatoi's aide showed over lunch at the Sind Club is that there is a pattern of favor-seeking, patronage and abuse of power that developed during Bhutto's reign - a pattern that the prime minister, at the very least, tolerated.

Within days of taking office, Bhutto herself set the tone, appointing her mother, Begum Nusrat Bhutto, to be her senior minister without portfolio - a position functionally so powerful that Bhutto's mother took the reins of government during her daughter's frequent absences from the capital.

Days after that appointment, Bhutto and her ruling Pakistan Peoples Party gave the prime minister's father-in-law, Hakim Ali Zardari, the chairmanship of the National Assembly's main public-accounts committee, a watchdog position traditionally reserved for the opposition. And, in less than two years' time, Bhutto doled out no fewer than 20,000 political-patronage jobs to party workers - at a time when unemployment ranked high.

But the documents take matters a step further.

A typical case is that of the Islamabad Stock Exchange.

Only two exchanges existed in Pakistan in December 1988 when the Bhutto administration took over - one in Lahore and the other in Karachi, the nation's largest city and financial capital. There was a need, all parties agreed, for another stock market in the nation's political capital, the serene, planned city of Islamabad. But who would establish and control it?

Two proposals were offered: one from an experienced consortium affiliated with the Karachi Stock Exchange and the other from a group whose main credentials were its family relationship with Bhutto's Cabinet minister in charge of finance, Ehsanul Haq Piracha. In the end, Piracha made the decision. And he selected his own family corporation, in which Piracha himself held a financial and management interest, to set up the new exchange.

In an order that overturned that decision, Lahore High Court Judge Abdul Majeed Tiwana pulled no punches.

Calling Piracha's action ``a fraud on the state,'' the judge ruled that the minister's decision to steer the new exchange to a company run by his brother-in-law ``was a clear act of favoritism and nepotism . . . an action taken in bad faith.''

And yet Bhutto permitted Piracha to retain his post, to present her 1990 budget to the nation and to continue in office until last week, when he was dismissed by the president, along with the rest of the government and Bhutto herself.

In the words of a Lahore businessman, referring to widespread allegations that similar corruption exists at the top levels of the majority of her ministries: ``How could Benazir have sacked Piracha? She would have had to sack all of her ministers. Instead, she chose to defend them all.''

But the allegations against her government were hardly confined to simple nepotism. In at least one case, which publicly touched on Bhutto's husband, there were charges of torture, extortion and outright theft - allegations that ultimately were brought directly to President Ishaq Khan's attention.

It happened a year ago, soon after London-based Pakistani businessman S.M.H. Bokhari arrived in Karachi to start a charitable institution for Pakistan's mentally handicapped citizens. He first contacted a local ruling-party official named Gulham Husein Khan Unar. According to Bokhari's official statement, Unar took him to see the prime minister's husband, who agreed to allot a parcel of government land for the project.

Several days later, though, while being escorted to a second meeting with Bhutto's husband by some of the same Peoples Party functionaries, Bokhari was kidnapped.

In a letter to the president, Bokhari described the 11-day ordeal thus: ``Instead of taking me to Bilal House (the prime minister's Karachi residence), they took me to an empty house on 17 September and kept me until 28 September. I was beaten and tortured. On 20 September 1990, I was taken to the Bank of Credit and Commerce in Karachi with a remote-control bomb wrapped to my leg, and the money was withdrawn by pay order.''

Bokhari said that Peoples Party officials used torture and the bomb to force him to withdraw and hand over 400,000 British pounds - nearly $800,000 - before they drove him to the Karachi airport and, using the security clearances they got through their party affiliation, put Bokhari on the next plane back to London.

Later, Bokhari sent letters and made several telephone calls to Bhutto to try to report the incident and recover his money. After several months, he began his letter to the president with these words: ``I most humbly and respectfully beg to bring to your kind attention a complaint against your prime minister . . .''

Bokhari has not received his money, although sources in Karachi said they believed an investigation will be opened.

Those cases are typical of many outlined in court documents, letters of intent, prime-ministerial briefing papers and other files that Jatoi's aides supplied to the president before he stunned the nation with his dismissal of Bhutto and her government.

Special ``speedy-trial'' courts have been set up to investigate and prosecute cases of alleged corruption under Bhutto. And the opposition's intent has long been clear. One of the Bhutto's foes, Abida Husein, used a Philippine analogy: ``Benazir Bhutto may have come to power like a Cory Aquino, but she will leave it like a Ferdinand Marcos.''

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Benazir

Bhutto

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A look at Benazir Bhutto's rise and fall from power:

-- April 10, 1986: Bhutto returns to Pakistan from exile to resurrect the Pakistan Peoples Party, founded by her father, who was executed by the military government.

-- Aug. 17, 1988: Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan's military ruler, dies in a mysterious plane crash.

-- Nov. 16, 1988: Bhutto's party wins national elections.

-- Dec. 2, 1988: Bhutto becomes prime minister, the first woman to lead a modern Moslem nation.

-- May 5, 1989: Squabbling interferes with the carrying out of Bhutto's multimillion-dollar welfare program.

-- Dec. 2, 1989: President Ghulam Ishaq Khan tells parliament that ``expectations have sunk into despair'' as corruption charges are leveled against Bhutto clan.

-- Aug. 5, 1990: The president dissolves Pakistan's National Assembly and removes Bhutto as prime minister.

Associated Press