Pakistani President Sacks Bhutto and Government

Benazir Bhutto, the glamorous, Radcliffe- and Oxford-educated heir to a turbulent political dynasty, was ordered to step down as Pakistan’s prime minister early today.

Three years into a five-year term, her government has long been dogged by charges of corruption. At the same time, the nation’s flagging economy has required austere, unpopular measures to attempt resuscitation.

Under Pakistan’s constitution, the president, Farooq Leghari, has the power to dismiss the prime minister. After weeks of speculation, he finally sacked his onetime political ally and called for elections Feb. 3, appointing another former Bhutto stalwart, Miraj Khalid, as interim prime minister.

Leghari’s action appeared to have the full support of the military. Troops in battle gear entered Islamabad in the early morning, taking over state-run radio and television stations and key government offices. The country’s airports were sealed, though automobile traffic appeared to move freely.

Soldiers, rifles slung over their shoulders, stood guard outside Bhutto’s official residence. Farhatullah Babar, the ousted prime minister’s spokesman, said Bhutto was inside but not taking calls. He added that she plans an emergency meeting with her supporters in the legislature today.

Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, was taken into custody by army officers, witnesses said. They said Zardari was brought to an undisclosed place from the governor’s house in the provincial capital of Lahore, where he had been staying with retired army general Saroop Khan. There were reports that others also had been arrested.

“An appeal to the electorate is necessary. . . . Public faith in the integrity of the government has disappeared,” Leghari said in a formal statement carried by the state-run news agency. “[I] hereby dissolve the National Assembly with immediate effect, and the prime minister and her Cabinet shall cease to hold office forthwith.”

With Bhutto’s ouster came speculation that she and members of her government would be barred from participating in politics. Leghari’s six-page dismissal order includes allegations that could be used to bolster such a move.

Among them, Bhutto is accused of undercutting the judicial system. For several months, she has fought a Supreme Court decision that gives the president--rather than the prime minister and parliament--power to appoint judges.

Leghari also said the government has used extrajudicial killings as a way of controlling long-running lawlessness in Karachi, which has been wracked by years of ethnic and religious violence.

Bhutto, 43, has in the past denied such oft-repeated charges. She recently warned of “a conspiracy against democracy in Pakistan.”

Indeed, her dismissal is a fierce blow to the nation’s fragile young democracy. The announcement carried a familiar ring to Pakistan’s 130 million people.

Bhutto is the eldest child and adored daughter of Pakistan’s first elected leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was deposed in a 1977 military coup and later hanged. She has portrayed herself abroad as a woman struggling against anti-democratic forces to bring economic liberalization and political moderation to her country.

A charismatic leader, Benazir Bhutto in 1988 won the nation’s first general election in more than a decade. But then, after 20 months, her term was cut short by then-President Ghulam Ishaq Khan amid many of the same complaints of corruption and incompetence that have been leveled against her recently. Bhutto won reelection in 1993, craftily knitting together a parliamentary coalition to again head one of the Islamic world’s most powerful, if volatile, states. “The dark clouds besetting our democratic horizon have disappeared and given way to a new dawn,” she declared in her silver-tongued way, as usual appearing to the West as a cultured, freedom-loving woman of the world.

But her actions since then, critics say, have been more inclined to undemocratic decision-making as she has routinely bypassed parliament and a rabidly hostile opposition.

“Instead of strengthening democratic institutions, which have been weakened by long periods of autocratic rule, Ms. Bhutto has virtually set out to destroy them,” Zahid Hussain, one of Pakistan’s most respected journalists, recently wrote.

Steel-fisted leadership and corruption have been mainstays of Pakistani regimes, civilian as well as military, but Bhutto’s recent intolerance has surprised and alienated her necessary support, most pivotally the military high command and Leghari.

On July 31, she expanded her Cabinet and took nepotism to unprecedented heights by giving a new portfolio--minister for investment--to her husband, a man so widely believed to be corrupt that he is called Mr. 10%, the amount he allegedly charges for doing business with his wife’s government.

Scandals have been commonplace. As Bhutto was proposing $1.1 billion in new taxes for a country where the average person earns $1.18 a day, the Pakistani press delightedly reprinted a London newspaper’s report that Bhutto and Zardari had bought a 36-acre estate, complete with heliport, in England for $4 million.

Bhutto vehemently denied the purchase, but invoices soon surfaced in Karachi detailing the air shipment to Britain of more than six tons of furniture from Bilawai House, the first couple’s residence near the Arabian Sea.

For Leghari, the high positions given to Zardari and other figures widely believed to be among the most venal politicians in Pakistan may well have been the “last straw,” presidential spokesman Khawaja Ijaz Sarwar said a few weeks ago.

But the most telling evidence of Bhutto’s besmirched democratic credentials came Sept. 20 on a dark routhoroughfare in Karachi, the prime minister’s hometown. Benazir’s younger brother and bitter political rival, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, 42, was shot dead in a gun battle with police while traveling home from a political rally.

Visibly devastated, a weeping Benazir Bhutto visited her brother’s deathbed. But her public standing had slumped so badly that, despite a total lack of proof, some Pakistanis assume that she or her husband had a hand in eliminating a nettlesome political opponent.

For months, Bhutto has been governing on borrowed time. Most likely, her ouster has only been forestalled by the political dilemma she represented for Leghari. A 15-party opposition alliance, led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of the Muslim League, has as morally shabby a reputation as Bhutto herself. Leghari would prefer not to see it increase power.

Last month, a strike called by Sharif was followed by more dramatic anti-corruption protests by the religious Jamaat-i-Islami party. Police used tear gas and batons to quell rioting in the capital.

The demonstrations had surprising support. Much of this is owed to the tax hikes Bhutto imposed as a way of reviving the nation’s stalled relationship with the International Monetary Fund. The IMF held up disbursements of a $600-million loan because of disenchantment with Pakistan’s attempted belt-tightening. The nation’s fiscal deficit is at a record $4.2 billion, according to its latest Central Bank report.

A U.S. State Department official in Washington said Monday evening that the Clinton administration would have no immediate comment on Bhutto’s removal.