Benazir Bhutto's Will Made Public
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By NICK SCHIFRIN
Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto wanted her husband to lead her party on an "interim basis" if anything happened to her, according to the will she wrote two days before returning to Pakistan in October.
The will is is being released by her party today. A copy was obtained by ABC News.
Asif Ali Zardari, the man Bhutto married when she was 34, became the co-chairman of the Pakistan People's Party with his son Bilawal after she was killed in a suicide bomb attack Dec. 27.
"I would like my husband, Asif Ali Zardari, to lead you in this interim period until you and he decide what is best," Bhutto wrote in the handwritten will, dated Oct. 16, 2007. "I say this because he is a man of courage and honor. He spent 11½ years in prison without bending despite torture. He has the political stature to keep our party united."
The will, confirmed by sources inside the party, had been read to the PPP's executive committee after her death, but had not been disclosed publicly before today.
Its secrecy created some controversy. Critics publicly questioned the legitimacy of Zardari's claim to power. He is widely viewed as corrupt in Pakistan and known as "Mr. 10 Percent" for the allegations that he skimmed off the top, while Bhutto was serving as prime minister in the 1990s.
"Whatever misgivings about the will, if they were there, have now been completely removed," PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar told ABC News.
Analysts say today's release will help Zardari's political standing inside and outside the party. He is hinting that he could become PPP's candidate for prime minister, should the party win enough seats in the Feb. 18 elections.
The PPP decided it was best for Zardari to become co-chairman of the party with 19-year-old Bilawal, a student at Oxford University.
"When I am at university, my father will take care of the party," Bilawal said at his first news conference, held three days after his mother was killed. "The party's long struggle for democracy will continue with renewed vigor. My mother always said democracy is the best revenge."
The PPP, the largest party in Pakistan, has always been led by a Bhutto — and the will officially perpetuates the family business. Benazir Bhutto became party leader after her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the party's founder and the country's first popularly elected prime minister, was killed in 1979.
"She was very much confident that her own progeny would be taking over the political mantle at some stage," Tariq Fatmi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, told ABC News.
Analysts say Zardari is consolidating power and will hold onto it until his son turns 25, when he is old enough to run for parliament.
"Pakistani politics, and especially the PPP, being so dynastic and their vote bank being so dependent on the Bhutto name, obviously Mr. Zardari will keep the mantle with himself," Fatmi said. "I don't expect him to give up that post, and I don't expect in the very near future any challenge to him. There is no one really in the party that would be willing to challenge him."
Zardari told Newsweek he wouldn't rule out becoming prime minister if the party chose him.
"There is no one single personality [in the party], apart from me, who anybody even knows," he was quoted as saying. "No one else has a consensus."
But there are critics to the dynastic politics that have been practiced by the PPP, critics who include members of Benazir Bhutto's family.
"When we vote for people because of their name, that means we don't vote for them for their platform, and it means they're not answerable for their platforms or for their political agenda," Fatima Bhutto, Benazir's niece, told ABC News before the will was made public. She is the oldest child of Benazir's brother and, at 25, six years older than Bilawal. "It doesn't empower the people. It doesn't strengthen democratic institutions. And it's really akin to monarchy — it's political inbreeding, in a way."
The will was released two days before the official 40-day mourning period ends, after which Zardari and the rest of the PPP leadership have promised to launch "mammoth" campaign rallies across the country.
"They feel inspired because Ms. Bhutto has called on them to continue their fight," the PPP's Babar said. "It has a positive impact on the people. They feel galvanized."
Bhutto concluded by urging the party to follow its populist origins. "I wish all of you success in fulfilling the manifesto of our party and in serving the downtrodden, discriminated and oppressed people of Pakistan. Dedicate yourselves to freeing them from poverty and backwardness as you have done in the past."
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