11-Year Ruler Forced to Juggle Power and Reforms : Pakistan’s Zia Treading a Political High-Wire

Wearing simple black sandals and a plain cloth version of the country’s pajama-style national dress, Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq hardly looked a president, let alone a dictator.

And, as he sipped tea and fingered well-worn prayer beads in an intimate room of his Mogul-style presidential palace recently, he sounded far more humble than his 11 years as Pakistan’s authoritarian ruler might suggest.

“I really have been a reluctant ruler,” Zia told the small group of journalists he had invited to the palace for tea. “Really. You can say that. A reluctant ruler. But I am not a person to just give up in disgust and walk away. I am determined to stay here until I solve all of the many problems that continue to face our country.

“Only then will I disappear and start playing as much golf as I wish I were playing right now.”

Had Predecessor Executed

A veteran Pakistani journalist smiled at these words from the man who led a military coup and a subsequent sweeping national purge, seizing the reins of power in his country of 100 million and executing his predecessor and many others more than a decade ago.

“It’s true that President Zia was a reluctant coup-maker in 1977,” the journalist said later. “But now, it seems, he is at the point that so many long-serving rulers seem to reach. . . . He is actually beginning to believe that this is not simply his duty but his destiny.”

Pakistan’s 63-year-old military ruler is now at a crucial political crossroads, both for himself and his strategically important nation. He is facing an unprecedented challenge from within by the country’s increasingly unified political opposition while striving to preserve the backing of his principal outside supporter, the United States.

Doling Out Reforms

The result has been something of a political high-wire act. Zia has attempted in recent months to dole out as many new freedoms and reforms as he feels he must to appease the internal and external forces pressing for democracy. At the same time, he is struggling to maintain the unchecked power he believes he still needs to help Pakistan advance economically and socially.

A career military officer who remains chief of staff of the Pakistani army, Zia apparently has managed to retain his control over the country’s large armed forces, which have staged several successful coups since Pakistan was created as an Islamic nation in 1947.

But, several Pakistani and Western analysts here said, he is increasingly showing an unwillingness to part with power, trying instead to create the illusion of reform rather than true democratization. In the words of the Pakistani journalist at the tea party, Zia is “opting for destiny rather than democracy.”

In the face of mounting pressure from Washington, for example, Zia announced two weeks ago that “free, fair and impartial” national elections will be held in November, which most analysts said would be the first such voting in nearly two decades.

Restrictive Election Rules

But, just a day later, he decreed a restrictive set of election rules that put his main political foe, Benazir Bhutto, at a disadvantage. (Bhutto’s father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was executed in 1979 on Zia’s order for conspiracy to murder.)

Zia, who is still widely considered a shrewd political manipulator, also timed the elections to coincide with the final month of Bhutto’s pregnancy, which will make it virtually impossible for the 35-year-old opposition leader to campaign through the rugged Pakistani countryside in the critical last weeks of the campaign.

(A spokesman for Bhutto’s party, the Pakistan People’s Party, said last week that Bhutto’s mother, Nusrat, will return from exile in Europe to campaign.)

Fully aware of the domestic and international criticism of his moves, Zia then countered with a public relations offensive. He delivered a major national address and held two news conferences in two days--his first meetings with the press in four months. The second was the informal and unpretentious afternoon tea party with journalists, whose reports about him and his policies had been critical for weeks.

Such unusual access provided the reporters with an intimate look at Pakistan’s longest-serving president. What they saw was a still brilliant ruler who, despite his personal charm, political cunning and apparent humility, appears increasingly rattled and defensive about his quest to hold onto power.

Opens With Sarcasm

In responding to recent criticism of him in the international press, the usually thick-skinned Zia opened his tea party with sarcasm.

“All of your reports are a little colored,” Zia told the reporters. “But I don’t blame you. You only see the color of the glasses you wear.”

And, at the end of his second news conference, Zia let slip an unconfirmed report--later proved to be untrue--that the Soviets had halted their withdrawal and actually deployed 10,000 additional men in Afghanistan. The slip made international headlines and triggered sharp denials from both the United States and the Soviet Union.

Zia’s new-found defensiveness also showed in a long declamation justifying his latest efforts to impose strict Islamic law on this 98% Muslim nation, which has largely remained moderate in its adherence to Islamic law. In June, Zia issued a presidential decree making Islamic law supreme, bringing much of Pakistani public and private life under the supervision of Islamic scholars and priests.

Referring to reports that compared him to Iran’s fundamentalist leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, he issued a warning to the press.

Islamization ‘Fundamental’

“Don’t say Zia wants everyone to grow beards or be locked up in a room,” he said sharply. “It is not so. What I am saying is this (Islamization) is the fundamental, number one issue in our country. The relationship cannot just be between man and God. Anyone who thinks (Pakistan) could be a secular state is wrong.”

Despite the momentary lapses and patches of harsh rhetoric, though, Zia proved through the week of exposure that he is still sharp, shrewd and, almost always, warm and charming--rare qualities in a Pakistani ruler. Analysts have cited those qualities to explain his unprecedented tenure.

“To fully understand President Zia is to understand that he has four distinctions shared by no other ruler in Pakistani history,” said longtime Pakistani political analyst and journalist Husain Haqqani, who speaks often with the president and also prays with him. “Zia is the first natively educated ruler of Pakistan. He is personally religious, the son of an imam (religious leader). He is the first ruler who did not come from an elite, ruling-class family. And he is the first military ruler who did not get into party politics.”

Although even Haqqani concedes that Zia may be on the verge of donning political party colors for the first time to boost his handpicked candidates in the next election, he insists that the president remains, in all other respects, committed to those distinctions.

Zia went out of his way to underscore his own humility last week.

On the Islamization issue, he said: “I am not a bigoted mullah (Islamic clergyman). I am a very humble practicing Muslim. That is all.”

And Zia showed his characteristic sense of humor in answering what is perhaps the most sensitive and personal recent criticism, that he deliberately timed the coming elections to coincide with Bhutto’s ninth month of pregnancy.

Not Yet a Midwife

“This is the first time I am hearing of this,” Zia said, laughing heartily. “I have not yet adopted the profession of midwifery, and I am not as dirty and low as some may think.

“Besides,” he added, taking pains not to mention Bhutto by name, “I am not concerned about the personal affairs of the lady.”

As the second press conference ended late Saturday afternoon, Zia said he wanted to read a quotation that best described his own perception of himself.

“If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for business,” Zia began, reading from the paper in front of him. “I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said about me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, 10 angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”

Zia paused dramatically.

“Do you know who said that?” he asked, pushing his reading glasses up to his forehead. “It was Abraham Lincoln.”