Commentary/Mani Shankar Aiyar

Benazir and Jayalalitha are their own worst enemies

When Asif Zardari was last in jail, following the dismissal of her government in 1990, Benazir too had announced that he would no longer be her Mr 10 per cent. But during her second term, Mr 10 per cent became more like Mr 110 per cent, the new Convention Centre in Islamabad, for example, having been contracted out for Rs 650 million when the caretaker government, under its doctrine of Ehtesab (accountability), estimated that it could not have cost much more than Rs 300 million to build.

PIA is still trying to find an explanation for how a PIA Boeing-747 just happened to be diverted to Argentina to bring back a dozen of Asif Zardari's favoured polo ponies. No one is picked up the tab. No one is able to pin responsibility on who exactly ordered PIA to detour to Buenos Aires of all places. And the buck remains unpaid just as Zardari asks why he should pick up the tab for the millions spent on the construction of stables for his ponies at the prime minister's residence in Islamabad. I lived with the prime minister, he says in injured innocence, and my ponies lived with me, so naturally they are as entitled to government housing as the PM's spouse! Love me, love my horse, as the saying goes.

As for the 350-acre farm in Surrey, complete with a mansion appropriate to the style of one to the manor born (which Benazir was but Zardari was not!), Benazir simply denies she has anything to do with it. Many in Pakistan are willing to believe her. Because chances are that Asif actually bought it for a girlfriend -- some say second wife - for whom he was going to ditch Benazir. He almost got away with it, for he did flee Pakistan clandestinely the last week of October. But after President Farooq Leghari assured Benazir that her dismissal was the last thing he had on his mind, Asif returned. And within a week, Leghari struck.

Meanwhile, of course, there had been the assassination in cold blood of Benazir's brother and political rival Murtaza. Bizarre stories are spread about the too: that it was Asif's revenge for Murtaza having shaved off half of Zardari's mustache; that the killing was carried out under the supervision of a superintendent of police hand-picked by Asif and, says none less than the president of Pakistan, foisted on the Clifton area of Karachi (where the Bhuttos and the Zardaris live) with intent to kill; and that Murtaza was not actually killed on the spot but deliberately left to bleed to death on the road for 52 minutes after the shoot-out.

Jayalalitha's Sasikala, like Benazir's Naheed, might be accused of corruption and abuse of power on a hummungous scale, but not of murder. I found if difficult to find anyone in Pakistan willing to certify Asif's (or, for that matter, Benazir's) non-culpability. Therefore, it might not be quite as easy for Benazir to spend a few days in the clink or judicial remand and start garnering the sympathy of the people as Jayalalitha had done. But if, in fact, she is estranged from her husband, as some believe, the perhaps the mills of justice, like those of God, can grind, slowly but grind fine without Benazir implicating herself by extricating her husband. Jayalalitha, of course, has no husband.

Assuming for a moment, however, that Benazir is able to cop out of the murder charge, the prospects of her being able to relaunch herself are considerable. This she could do patiently and pleadingly if she were a statesman. She is not. So, I suspect the might play the regional card. Benazir has the charisma and the nationwide presence to become a considerable thorn in the flesh of Nawaz Sharif by pitting a PPP-BNP-ANP alliance against the PML on questions of provincial rights, regional demands, ethnic identities and the unacceptability of Punjabi domination.

What, however, can noble both Benazir and Jayalalitha is themselves -- they are their own worst enemies, in nature, in character. For, as the Egyptian poet, Cavafy, brilliantly translated by Lawrence Durrel in Justine says No ship exists/To take you from yourself.

In Jayalalitha's case, it is the same arrogance and haughtiness which have made her such a charismatic figure that have also proved her undoing. Benazir is, in this respect, a pea picked from the same pod that nurtured Jayalalitha. An encounter between the two would require a Sophocles to properly chronicle. The complication in Benazir's case is her father and the influence he wields on her from beyond the grave.

Bhutto's undoing was his placing Zia-ul Haq from obscurity, promoting him over the heads of several senior colleagues. He did it because in a renowned instance of sycophancy, Zia, as the commanding office in Multan, arranged for serried ranks of soldiers to hold aloft the PPP flag when Bhutto came to dine at the mess. Similar sycophancy on the part of Justice Sajjad Ali Shah so impressed Benazir that she insisted on promoting. Sajjad as chief justice of the supreme court over the heads of several of his colleagues on the bench. And just as no bypassed general raised a finger to help Bhutto when Zia marched Bhutto to the jailhouse, so also did no superseded judge come to Benazir's rescue when she started railing against the judiciary.

Bhutto, father and daughter, brought the house down upon their own heads. If Jayalalitha does not have a husband, she also does not have a father to match Zulfie, but too has brought that house down upon herself.

If, however, these two ladies succeed in rising above themselves, disproving Cavafy by finding a ship that actually takes them from themselves, then we have far from heard the last of them.

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