SOUTH ASIA : Many Pakistanis Irked by Plan to Honor a Bhutto : A $9.4-million tomb is scheduled to be built for ex-leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the premier’s father. But he was hanged as a murderer.

Does a prime minister hanged as a murderer merit a multimillion-dollar place of repose?

Add that his daughter is now this nation’s leader and the controversy that still swirls around the charismatic Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s tenure in office further heats up a sizzling political issue in Pakistan.

In Sind, where many farm laborers live little better than medieval serfs, the provincial Cabinet two months ago approved construction of an imperial-sized, $9.4-million mausoleum for the late prime minister and rabble-rousing founder of the Pakistan People’s Party.

That lavish expenditure in a province running a $233-million budget deficit, where impoverished city dwellers lack basic services like running water, has reopened debate about the larger-than-life figure known as “ZAB” and his checkered legacy.

“There are only two ways that Pakistan’s most controversial politician, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, is looked at,” D. Shah Kahn, a political observer, has said. “Either as a knight in shining armor, who came to deliver the people from the drudgery of an outdated and repressive political system, or as a nemesis that was inflicted on Pakistan. . . . There is hardly a problem for which Bhutto is not blamed.”

Not coincidentally, the late leader’s daughter, Benazir, was elected to her second term as Pakistan’s prime minister three months before the decision to build the tomb was made by fellow People’s Party members who control Sind.

She has approved the plan for a 56,000-square-foot edifice at the family’s ancestral burial ground near Larkana where Bhutto’s remains are now interred.

The funds are supposed to come from the Sind and national governments, the private sector and foreign donors, with the mix still a mystery.

Because Bhutto’s 1971-77 reign remains a watershed in Pakistani life, the vote by Sind’s leaders couldn’t help but stir big controversy. And since Benazir Bhutto’s appeal and support repose in large part on her claim to her father’s populist mantle, the real issue is not history, but present-day politics.

“He was wicked and a villain,” Muhammad Siddique Farooque, spokesman of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League, said predictably of the late creator of his party’s bitterest and most successful rival. “People hold him responsible for the dismemberment of Pakistan. He used coercive methods, had people killed and beaten.”

Some newspapers have objected that Bhutto’s legacy is too disputed for the public to spend money on his tomb or the separate memorial complex that his daughter wants to build in Rawalpindi on the site of his death. They suggest that People’s Party members and other sympathizers contribute money instead.

In 1979, Bhutto was hanged in a cell in the Central Jail here, a year and a half after being deposed by Gen. Zia ul-Haq. The feudal landholder who rocketed to power with his spellbinding harangues in favor of “Islamic socialism” had been tried and found guilty of abetting the murder of an opponent.

But there is no underestimating the significance of his deeds.

On the positive side: Bhutto framed Pakistan’s 1973 constitution, the first in the country’s history passed by a legislature elected on the basis of one citizen, one vote. He demanded that Pakistan become self-reliant in the nuclear field, which from a Pakistani point of view made the country able to treat India as an equal, since it is believed capable of producing an atomic bomb. He gave people hope that their miserable lives could be better.

The minus side: By refusing to deal with the party that won a majority in East Pakistan in 1970, the autocratic Bhutto may have served as a catalyst for the breakup of the country and the creation of present-day Bangladesh.

Also, he dismissed the left-wing government in the province of Baluchistan, touching off an insurgency in which about 10,000 people perished.

A New Bhutto Bombshell

Pakistanis are deeply divided over the decision by lawmakers in an impoverished region to spend $9.4 million for a mausoleum for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the former prime minister, hanged as a murder. The project was backed by his daughter, present Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The Bhutto legacy remains hot and divisive for Pakistan: Was he a hero a villain for this nation?

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: Charismatic but controversial prime minister hanged in 1979

Benazir Bhutto: Current prime minister wants to honer father with lavish mausoleum