World View : Bhutto and Aquino: A Tale of Two Revolutions : As dreams sour, Pakistani may give their ousted leader another chance. The Phillipines’ president hangs on grimly.

They are historic figures, two Western-educated Asian women who rode peaceful “people power” revolutions to lead their impoverished nations from brutal dictatorship to struggling democracy.

Both, propelled to prominence by martyred men, freed a boisterous press, restored civil liberties and were held up as champions of the poor. Both won standing ovations from an adoring U.S. Congress in the capital of their closest ally.

And both Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto and the Philippines’ Corazon Aquino have squandered remarkable goodwill and promise through political ineptitude, widespread corruption in their administrations and personal arrogance in the face of myriad economic and political crises.

Despite similarities, one difference is key: Pakistan’s voters go to the polls Wednesday to decide whether to give the 37-year old Bhutto another chance. Three months ago, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, backed by the military, summarily sacked her as prime minister, and there is still a chance she may be arrested or banned from political office. Her husband has already been jailed, and she is charged in six court cases with corruption and abuse of power.

In Manila, Aquino, 54, grimly hangs on as president after the seventh and latest military attempt to grab power, a futile and nearly bloodless revolt on the island of Mindanao. She has lasted 4 1/2 years, but her future is no more assured.

“I guess the lesson is that the transition to a broad-based democracy may be much more difficult than the revolution itself,” said Maleeha Lodhi, a political scientist in Islamabad, Pakistan.

“Maybe you need moderate leaders, gray consensus-oriented figures, rather than colorful leaders who are seen as larger than life--and behave like it,” Lodhi added.

Bhutto’s aides insist that her next administration would be better than the previous one. “I think she’ll be different now,” said Yafees Siddiqi, spokesman for Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party. “Before, she had all these people to take care of. That’s why everyone said she was corrupt. Now she’s paid off everybody. Now she can have a new start.”

Aquino has also made some efforts to change her administration’s ways. In June, frustrated at the legislature’s unwillingness to fund or implement her policies, she launched a political movement called Kabisig, which means “linking arms.” It’s purpose: to send money and government assistance directly to provincial officials and non-government organizations. The effectiveness of the program remains unproven, however.

Some say the real lesson here is that Bhutto and Aquino both had to cope with unrealistic expectations abroad as well as political and military enemies at home. Both inherited bankrupt treasuries, bloody internal conflicts and a feudal power structure that offered little room for reform.

One Western diplomat who has served in both capitals just shook his head when he compared the two cultures.

“The daily violence, the politics of personality, the dominance of feudal families, tribal warlords, a collapsing economy, political goons running around . . ., “ he said. “How could anyone really take control?”

Still, the expectations were fueled by the sheer drama of their arrival. Bhutto’s father was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a populist prime minister overthrown by Gen. Zia ul-Haq and hanged after a dubious show trial in 1979.

After 11 years of martial law, Zia was killed in August, 1988, in a still-unexplained plane crash. Groomed at Oxford and Radcliffe, and tested in squalid prison and exile, Bhutto took over her father’s party to narrowly win national elections three months later.

Aquino’s husband was Benigno S. (Ninoy) Aquino Jr. Chief opponent of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, he was jailed for eight years under Marcos’ martial law and then assassinated when he returned to Manila from exile in Boston in August, 1983.

His widow, who called herself a “housewife,” took office in February, 1986, after fraudulent elections and a civilian-supported military coup in Manila forced Marcos and his family to flee to Hawaii.

But no one said democracy would be easy. Pakistan’s 107 million people have suffered three wars, three internal insurgencies and three military dictators since the nation was carved out of British India as a Muslim homeland in 1947.

Generals have determined Pakistan’s politics ever since, running the country for 25 of its 43 years. Two prime ministers, a president, several high-ranking generals and countless politicians and religious leaders have been assassinated. Thirteen governments have been dismissed and three constitutions written.

Bhutto faced constant suspicion from the generals. They insisted on keeping most intelligence and foreign policy operations, showing her only peripheral papers. And when she apparently angered them, President Ishaq Khan dismissed her.

“When the politicians create a vacuum, the military moves in,” said Ayaz Amir, an Islamabad analyst and columnist. “It’s that simple.”

The 60 million Filipinos have been lucky in comparison. Manila hasn’t had a military government since World War II. The army has battled a 21-year-old Communist insurgency and occasional Muslim secessionist efforts, but the death tolls in both conflicts have fallen.

Moreover, the 160,000-member Philippine armed forces only became politicized in the 1970s under Marcos. Still largely unprofessional, the military rebels have only succeeded once--and that was to throw Marcos out and help install Aquino. So far, the top command has stayed loyal to her.

The two women have another key difference. Aquino relies on strong support from the Roman Catholic Church in her staunchly religious country. After a coup attempt that left 113 dead last December, Cardinal Jaime Sin went so far as to declare a coup to be “a sin.”

Bhutto, by contrast, the first woman to rule a modern Islamic nation, faced critical opposition from orthodox mullahs. Although she wore a traditional Islamic head shawl and wed in a family-arranged marriage, influential clerics denounced her as an infidel.

Indeed, Bhutto’s ouster came as Pakistan’s Parliament was considering a bill that would impose the strict Islamic code of sharia as the law of the land. The bill, on hold since the political upheaval in August, would allow amputation of hands or ears as criminal punishment, ban banks from collecting interest, regulate the media and most important, give mullahs the power to decide who could be prime minister.

But critics say Bhutto and Aquino share depressingly similar problems as well. One is souring relations with the United States.

Pakistan is Washington’s closest ally in South Asia and the third-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. The Philippines hosts two of the Pentagon’s largest overseas bases and is the fourth-largest aid recipient.

Those ties are being severely tested now. On Oct. 1 the Bush Administration froze nearly $600 million in proposed military and economic aid to Pakistan. Under U.S. law, the aid cannot be resumed unless Islamabad curtails programs apparently designed to produce nuclear weapons.

In Manila, Aquino infuriated the White House when she refused to meet visiting Defense Secretary Dick Cheney two months after U.S. Air Force jets helped put down rebel troops in the failed December coup.

Since then, Washington has declared Manila a danger post for diplomats and suspended one of the oldest and largest Peace Corps programs after reported threats from Communist guerrillas. The two allies are negotiating now to reduce America’s huge military presence at Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base.

Bhutto and Aquino clearly share other problems as well. Neither has proven to be a strong administrator or an able politician. Both have been seen as well-intentioned but indecisive, surrounded by corruption and cronyism.

“She has great virtues and great flaws, almost in equal measure,” one of Bhutto’s friends said. “She has courage, perseverance and charisma. But she also has a natural arrogance and complete inability to listen to criticism. She’s surrounding by sycophants. And she’s vindictive.”

More important, perhaps, neither woman controlled corruption in the Cabinet, or even, critics charge, in their own families.

Bhutto was stung by still-unsubstantiated allegations that her now-imprisoned husband, Asif Ali Zardari, illegally benefited from government contracts, kickbacks and unsecured loans. She didn’t help his claims of innocence by appointing his father, Hakim Ali Zardari, to head the agency responsible for investigating official corruption.

In Manila, five of Aquino’s relatives sit in Congress, and her younger brother, Jose (Teting) Cojuangco, is widely seen as a powerful wheeler-dealer with an interest in casinos. But no one has been charged and, unlike Bhutto, no one suggests that Aquino has personally benefitted.

No one, however, suggests that Bhutto or Aquino have succeeded in helping the poor, either. Both from giant land-owning families and neither has challenged the powerful feudal dynasties--about 40 in Pakistan, 60 in the Philippines--who control legislatures, banks and the huge farms that keep millions of landless workers in medieval-like bondage.

Although Pakistan’s economy is a shambles, for example, Bhutto refused to risk alienating big landlords by tightening tax loopholes. Indeed, she passed no legislation except budgets. Poverty and illiteracy, already among the world’s worst, actually got worse.

In Manila, Aquino let the landlord-dominated legislature gut long-promised land reform. Despite marginal economic improvements, a soaring birth rate means more Filipinos live in grinding poverty than ever before.

“Changes in government did not change the status quo” in either country, said analyst Zahid Hussain. They just transferred power from one set of oligarchies to another, he said.

“The people-power revolutions weren’t what they appeared,” said a diplomat who has served in both countries. “Everyone expected so much of Benazir. Just like Cory. It’s really such a shame.”