By Ayaz Amir
A dozen NROs will not wash the name of Cotecna, the Swiss firm said to have given huge kickbacks for a customs inspection contract during the golden days of Mohtarma's first premiership. The famous Queen's necklace which later figured high in the allegations brought against the ruling couple (it was truly that) was said to have been paid for out of the Cotecna kickbacks.
The cases in Swiss courts which arose out of that affair if taken to their logical conclusion could have spelt serious international trouble for those figuring in it (I am being coy with names because after Ms Bhutto's all too tragic assassination taking her name in connection with these sordid events is not easy). But Pervez Musharraf's domestic necessities arose to the defence of the Cotecna principals. The Swiss cases magically melted away but their dim memory remains, a reminder, if nothing else, of how what could have been a fairy tale -- Ms Bhutto's premiership -- became mired in controversy and scandal.
My telephone number in Islamabad in those distant days was 826611 while the number of the Prime Minister's house was 816611. And since telephone lines then were not what they are now -- Pakistan not having quite entered the digital or optic fibre age -- it was not uncommon for calls to slip from one line to the other. So it was that sometimes to my amusement, at other times to my great annoyance, I used to receive calls meant for the Prime Minister's house.
Once, cross my heart, I got a call from Geneva from a Mr Schlegelmilch (I hope I have got his name right) who wanted to be put through to Mr Zardari. I pretended to be someone associated with Mr Zardari and said that he could tell me whatever he had to say in the fullest confidence. But Mr Schlegelmilch was too smart to fall for this. It later transpired that he was the go-between in the Cotecna affair and received a handsome cut for his pains. (I am not making this up. I wrote about it at the time.)
Part of the mythology to which the political class subscribes in Pakistan is that no sooner is a political government in place than the military establishment and the intelligence agencies start conspiring against it. While true to a great extent, this alone does not account for the fingers pointing at civilian shenanigans. Cotecna and the Queen's necklace were not scandals invented by ISI or Military Intelligence. They were real happenings scripted and performed by those then in power. ISI or MI may have made the most of them. But that's something else. Chinks in your armour don't expect your enemies not to exploit.
True, Mr Zardari then was neither president nor prime minister. But he was the first husband and as Nancy Reagan once said of her time as first lady, being close to someone -- her actual words were a bit different -- gives you unbeatable access. Mr Zardari did not have to hold any position to be a big player, or rather the biggest player, in the realm of high finance. In fact so great was the buzz in those days about his stupendous skill in financial matters that he earned the lasting sobriquet Mr Ten Percent. He can become the pope tomorrow and this tag won't leave him. Like ghosts, some other things too just don't go away.
So it is a bit disingenuous of Mr Farhatullah Babar, the ubiquitous presidential spokesman, to aver that Mr Zardari could have had nothing to do with the submarine affair -- the taking of kickbacks in a contract for the supply of three French Agosta submarines in 1994 -- because he was neither president nor prime minister, nor minister of defence. Adnan Khashogi was the biggest name in Saudi defence deals in the 1980s and 1990s, his kickbacks running into the billions. But he was no minister of defence or civil aviation. He was a high-flying entrepreneur who operated from the shadows, as such men must, making and cutting big-time deals.
Kashogi operated out of Lebanon. Mr Zardari did one better. For the hectic philanthropy which was his speciality, he operated out of the Prime Minister's house. We must hand it to the man for another reason: the boldness of his imagination knew no bounds. For recreation purposes he had horse stables set up in the grounds of the PM's house. No one had done anything of the kind before. There were so many other things Mr Zardari did which no one had done before. In more senses than one, therefore, he remains one of a kind.
The media will sorely miss him when he is no longer there to write about. In fact if the media had a heart -- about which most people will have the gravest doubts -- it would give Mr Zardari a medal for being the most write-able figure that there has been in our history. Musharraf was good copy too, but not as much as Mr Zardari. In the media's hall of fame he deserves an honoured place.
I wrote about the submarine affair too in 1994. The air was rife with rumours about the then naval chief, Admiral Mansur-ul-Haq, and a go-between, Amer Lodhi, being involved in the kickbacks accruing from that contract. Nothing was ever proved but then that's one of the greatest things about our Islamic Republic: nothing ever gets proved and so, happily, no one is ever punished. In this sense, in one form or the other, Pakistan has been living on NROs since its birth. The only difference is that while there have been previous whitewashes none has had as beguiling and innocent a name as the National Reconciliation Ordinance. The artist who thought of the name deserves an award.
I may add that because of the submarine column I wrote, I and the paper in which it was published received a five crore defamation/libel notice from Mr Zardari's lawyer. Thankfully it wasn't pursued beyond that first move.
But returning to Mr Zardari, despite his image problem, he -- counting everything, especially his ascent to the presidency -- has been a lucky man. But as his troubles mount his luck seems to be deserting thin. The general perception of him now is of an increasingly beleaguered figure holed up in the Presidency, his only communication with the outside world through his spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, whose word, alas, engenders disbelief with every passing day. The submarine affair -- resurfacing in the French left-wing newspaper Liberation -- couldn't have come at a more difficult time, because it refreshes public memories of the president's awkward past, when his main claim to fame was being Mr Ten Percent.
The allegation that the terrorist attack on the Karachi Sheraton in 2002 which led to the deaths of 11 French nationals was in retaliation to the non-payment of full kickbacks for the submarine contract I personally find farfetched if not wildly imaginative. Such an attack would have required the resources and the expertise of a full-fledged terrorist syndicate. To attribute it to Mr Zardari, as Liberation seems to do, is to stretch the limits of credulity and give him a more evil look than he deserves. But the kickbacks are a different matter. Allegations about them were widely believed when the contract was being finalised.
But we are in a terrible bind. Here we have all these tales of corruption and it is no cause for comfort when every footprint should be leading -- how is one to put this? -- where it should not lead. But many of us are also prey to the fear that if there are forces out to get the president and somehow they succeed, we will end up with not a purified democracy but, most likely, no democracy at all.
Talk of being between the devil and the deep sea: either Zardari or perdition. The fairies could have dealt us a better hand. But this is the one we have and the one we will have to live with for the time being.
Email: winlust@yahoo.com