Pakistan "They Have Done It Again"

By EDWARD W. DESMOND

Benazir Bhutto had always suspected that her term as Pakistan's Prime Minister would end abruptly, probably at the hands of the country's military. Even so, the news came as a shock to Bhutto last week. At 4:30 Monday afternoon, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan telephoned the Prime Minister at her official residence in Islamabad to inform her that he was dismissing her 20- month-old government under Article 58 of the constitution for "internal dissensions" and allegedly "horse trading for personal gain," among other things. "I can't believe it," she said as she hung up the phone. Shortly afterward she saw soldiers take up positions around the building. To a group of assembled friends she said, "They have done it again."

In the capital, President Ishaq addressed a press conference that began with a reading from the Koran: "Whatever evil befalls you is the result of your own deeds." He then proceeded to read a three-page indictment of the Bhutto government that included allegations of unconstitutional activities, corruption and mishandling of a violent political crisis in Sind province.

Accordingly, said the President, he had dissolved the National Assembly and declared a state of emergency. To run the government as interim Prime Minister, he said, he had chosen Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, 59 the leader of the opposition in the dissolved assembly and an inveterate enemy of Bhutto's. Despite that stern action, Ishaq stressed his commitment to democracy and promised new elections on Oct. 24 as "an opportunity for the people to restore their representatives' accountability." Later that night the country's four provincial assemblies were dissolved as well.

For all the air of constitutional propriety surrounding Ishaq's dismissal of Bhutto, his action marked a perilous interruption of Pakistan's fragile democratic process. U.S. diplomats, who were influential in soothing fears within the army high command after Bhutto won the 1988 elections, responded coolly to Ishaq's move but deemed it "consistent with the constitution of Pakistan." The Bush Administration did not appear ready to go along with a handful of U.S. Senators who advocated a cutoff in Washington's almost $600 million-a-year aid to Pakistan in response to what they called a "quasi- military coup." But U.S. diplomats said the real test would be Ishaq's ability to deliver on his promise of elections, a commitment that previous Pakistani Presidents have broken far more often than not.

Bhutto began to fight back immediately. She declared that her Pakistan People's Party would challenge Ishaq's action in the courts on the grounds that it was "illegal and unconstitutional" and based on "a pack of lies." She accused the army of forcing the decision on Ishaq, who has close ties to the military. Ishaq previously served as a Finance Minister under General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan's military dictator for 11 years and the man who had Bhutto's father, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, hanged in 1979. "It is the army that is running the show," she charged at a press conference in Karachi. Bhutto also announced that her party would participate in the October elections. Speaking with the same fiery tenacity that saw her through seven years of exile and imprisonment under Zia, she vowed, "We will win with a sweeping majority again."

She may be blocked, however, in her efforts to regain her popular support. In Islamabad, interim Prime Minister Jatoi announced that his top priorities were preparing for the elections and taking steps to guarantee that "anyone found involved in corruption is not spared." While soldiers guarded government offices to ensure that no incriminating papers would be removed, % Bhutto, her husband Asif Zardari and several of their close associates were told not to leave the country.

Ishaq made his move against Bhutto with the full knowledge that her popularity was in sharp decline. A chief reason: the widespread belief that many members of her government, as well as her husband, had made enormous amounts of money by taking advantage of their positions. Most of her Cabinet members, for example, had secured extremely lucrative commercial and industrial licenses. Though Bhutto has denied such charges, Ishaq challenged her claims, insisting that "despite being subject to widespread public condemnation, the government failed to take appropriate action."

Bhutto's popularity has also slipped in recent months because of the chaos in the southern province of Sind, where 635 people have died so far this year in a conflict between native Sindhis and mohajirs, the Muslims from India who settled in Sind at the time of the partition of British India in 1947, and their descendants. Bhutto's party controlled the provincial government but was unable to stop the violence that has all but paralyzed Karachi, the country's largest city and main port.

Despairing of a political settlement, the army repeatedly asked Bhutto for the constitutional authority to go in and disarm both the Sindhis and the mohajirs, but she refused, fearing damage to her base of support within the Sindhi community. Combined with the tension with India over Kashmir that still threatens war, the Sind crisis created a security dilemma that the army found intolerable -- and may have been the single most important factor in driving the generals to promote Ishaq's action. Says Mushahid Hussain, a leading political analyst: "The army wanted to clear up Sind fast. It did not want to fight on two fronts."

Throughout her 20 months in office, Bhutto was guilty of colossal political blundering. Reluctant to compromise or even negotiate, she took on practically every real and potential adversary to her weak government. With the army she meddled in promotions. In Punjab province she sponsored an unsuccessful campaign to bribe enough opposition politicians to unseat her archrival, chief minister Nawaz Sharif. In Sind she failed to honor a series of promises to her erstwhile ally, the Mohajir Qaumi Movement, thereby leading to the current turmoil in the province. In the end, Bhutto's helter-skelter governance gave the people she viewed as enemies the grounds they needed to unseat her.

With reporting by Anita Pratap/Islamabad