Asif Ali zardari

Asif Ali zardari served as the 11th President of Pakistan from 2008 to 2013. On 8 September 2013, Zardari became the country's first president to complete his constitutional term and handed over duties to a democratically elected successor. He also held the honour of being the 1st president to address the joint session of parliament for a record six times.

Asif Ali Zardari, who was born on 26 July, 1955 in Karachi, is a Sindhi of Baloch origin, belonging to the Sindhi-Baloch Zardari tribe. He received his primary education from Karachi Grammar School and graduated from Cadet College, Petaro in 1972.

Zardari came to prominence after his marriage to Benazir Bhutto in 1987. In 1988, General Zia-ul-Haq died in a plane crash. A few months later, Benazir Bhutto became Pakistan's first female Prime Minister when her party won 94 of 207 seats contested in the 1988 general elections.

In August 1990, Benazir Bhutto’s government was dismissed. During the interim government between August and October, caretaker Prime Minister Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, a Bhutto rival, initiated investigations of corruption by the Bhutto administration.

Asif Ali Zardari was arrested on 10 October 1990 on charges relating to kidnapping and extortion. The Bhutto family considered the indictment politically motivated and fabricated. In the October 1990 elections, Zardari was elected to the National Assembly while in jail.

Bhutto and the PPP staged a walkout from the inaugural session of the National Assembly to protest Zardari's incarceration. His release was blocked by a government ordinance that removed court's power to release suspects being tried in the terrorist court, which fast-track trials for alleged terrorists.

The ordinance was later revoked and a special court acquitted him of bank fraud and conspiracy to murder political opponents. He was freed in February 1993. In March 1994, Zardari was acquitted of bank fraud charges. All other corruption charges relating to Bhutto's first term were dropped or thrown out of the courts.

During the beginning of the second term of Bhutto Administration, a Bhutto family feud between Benazir and her mother, Nusrat Bhutto, surfaced over the political future of Murtaza Bhutto, Benazir's younger brother.

In September 1996, Murtaza and seven others died in a shootout with police in Karachi. At Murtaza's funeral, Nusrat accused Benazir and Zardari of being responsible and vowed to pursue prosecution. Ghanwa Bhutto, Murtaza's widow, also accused Zardari of being behind his killing.

President Farooq Leghari, who would dismiss the Bhutto government seven weeks after Murtaza's death, also suspected Benazir and Zardari's involvement. Several of Pakistan's leading newspapers alleged that Zardari wanted his brother-in-law out of the way because of Murtaza's activities as head of a breakaway faction of the PPP.

In November 1996, Bhutto's government was dismissed by the President Farooq Leghari primarily because of corruption and Murtaza's death. Zardari was arrested in Lahore while attempting to flee the country to Dubai. In March 1997, Zardari was elected to the Senate while in a Karachi jail. In December 1997, he was flown to Islamabad under tight security to take his oath.

A major report was published in January 1998 by The New York Times detailing Zardari's vast corruption and misuse of public funds. The report described how Zardari had arranged secret contracts, painstaking negotiations, and the dismissal of anyone who objected to his dealings.

In July 1998, he was indicted for corruption in Pakistan after the Swiss government handed over documents to Pakistani authorities relating to money laundering. The Swiss had also indicted him for money laundering. At the same time, in a separate case, he and 18 others were indicted for conspiracy to murder Murtaza Bhutto. After criminal prosecutions began, Citibank closed Zardari's account.

In April 1999, Bhutto and Zardari were convicted for receiving indemnities from a Swiss goods inspection company that was hired to end corruption in the collection of customs duties. The couple received a fine of $8.6 million. Both were also sentenced to five years imprisonment, but Bhutto could not be extradited back to Pakistan from her self-imposed exile. Zardari was already in jail awaiting trial on separate charges. The evidence used against them had been gathered by Swiss investigators and the Pakistani Bureau of Accountability.

In May 1999, he was hospitalised after an alleged attempted suicide. He claimed it was a murder attempt by the police.

In August 2003, a Swiss judge convicted Bhutto and Zardari of money laundering and sentenced them to six months imprisonment and a fine of $50,000. In addition, they were required to return $11 million to the Pakistani government. The conviction involved charges relating to kickbacks from two Swiss firms in exchange for customs fraud. In France, Poland, and Switzerland, the couple faced additional allegations.

In November 2004, he was released on bail by court order. A month later, he was unexpectedly arrested for failing to show up for a hearing on a murder case in Islamabad. He was placed under house arrest in Karachi. A day later, he was released on $5,000 bail. His release, re-arrest and then again release, was regarded as a sign of growing reconciliation between Musharraf's government and the PPP. After his second release in late 2004, he left for exile in Dubai.

He returned to Lahore in April 2005. Police prevented him from holding rallies by escorting him from the airport to his home. He criticised Musharraf's government, but rumours of reconciliation between Musharraf and the PPP grew. Zardari went back to Dubai in May 2005.

In June 2005, he suffered a heart attack and was treated in the United Arab Emirates. A PPP spokesman stated he underwent angioplasty in the United States. In September 2005, he did not show up for a Rawalpindi hearing on corruption charges and the court issued an arrest warrant. His lawyers stated he could not come because he was recovering from his treatment. Following a request by the Rawalpindi court, Interpol issued a red notice in January 2006 against the couple which called on member nations to decide on the couple's extradition.

When Bhutto announced in September 2007 her upcoming return to Pakistan, Zardari was in New York City undergoing medical treatment. After the October 2007 bombing in Karachi that tainted Bhutto's return, Zardari accused Pakistani intelligence services of being behind the attacks and claimed, it was not done by militants.

In November 2007, Musharraf instituted emergency rule for six weeks under the pretext of rising Islamist militancy, a few days after Bhutto's departure for Dubai. Immediately after the state of emergency was invoked, Bhutto returned to Pakistan, while Zardari again stayed behind in Dubai.

Emergency rule was initiated right before the Supreme Court of Pakistan began deliberations on the legality of Musharraf's U.S. backed proposal, the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) to drop corruption charges against Bhutto and Zardari in return for a joint Bhutto-Musharraf coalition to govern Pakistan.

In the midst of his exile, Zardari had several different legal problems. In Pakistan, Musharraf granted him amnesty for his alleged offences through the National Reconciliation Ordinance, drafted in October 2007. However, the ordinance faced mounting public pressure and an uncompromising judiciary.

In addition, it only dealt with charges up to 1999. This left open the possibility of investigations into his alleged involvement in illegal kickbacks discovered in October 2005, under the oil-for-food program. If the ordinance was rescinded, he would have had to deal with charges relating to evading duties on an armoured BMW, commissions from a Polish tractor manufacturer, and a kickback from a gold bullion dealer.

In Switzerland, Bhutto and Zardari appealed the 2003 Swiss conviction, which required the reopening of the case in October 2007. In November 2007, Swiss authorities returned the frozen $60 million to him through offshore companies because of the National Reconciliation Ordinance. In Spain, a criminal investigation was opened over the money laundering for the oil-for-food program because of the illicit profits handled through Spanish firms. In Britain, he was fighting a civil case against the Pakistani government for the proceeds from the liquidation sale of a Surrey mansion. He successfully used his medical diagnosis to postpone a verdict on his British manor trial.

On the night of 27 December 2007, he returned to Pakistan following the assassination of his wife Benazir Bhutto. Zardari prevented Bhutto's autopsy in accordance with Islamic principles. He and their children attended her funeral, which was held the next day. He denied government allegations that the assassination was sponsored by Al-Qaida. He called for an international inquiry into her death and stated that she would still be alive if Musharraf's government had provided adequate protection. He and his family offered to accept Musharraf's demand to exhume Bhutto's body in exchange for a United Nations inquiry, but Musharraf rejected the proposal.

In Bhutto's political will, she had designated Zardari her successor as party leader. However, their nineteen-year-old son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, became Chairman of the PPP because Zardari favoured Bilawal to represent Bhutto's legacy, in part to avoid division within the party due to his own unpopularity. He did, however, serve as Co-Chairman of the PPP for at least three years until Bilawal completed his studies overseas.

Zardari called for no delays to the 8 January parliamentary elections and for the participation of all opposition parties. Other major political parties quickly agreed to participate, ending any chance of a boycott. Because of the turmoil after the Bhutto assassination, the elections were postponed six weeks to 18 February. In January 2008, he suggested that if his party did win a majority, it might form a coalition with Musharraf's Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q). He and Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (N) party (PML-N), threatened national protests if any vote-rigging was attempted. He himself could not run for Parliament because he had not filed election papers in November 2008, back when he had no foreseeable political ambition while Bhutto was alive.

The PPP and the PML-N won the largest and second largest number of seats respectively in the February elections. He and Sharif agreed to form a coalition government, ending American hopes of a power-sharing deal between him and Musharraf. They agreed to restore the judiciary, but Zardari took a less stringent stance than Sharif. He met with U.S. ambassador Anne W. Patterson, who pushed for a pact with Musharraf. To strengthen the new coalition, he reached out to Awami National Party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, and Baloch nationalist leaders, who had all boycotted the elections.

After weeks of speculation and party infighting, he said he did not want to become Prime Minister. In mid-March 2008, he chose Yousaf Raza Gillani for Prime Minister in a snub to the more politically powerful Makhdoom Amin Fahim.

He and Sharif agreed in a 9 March 2008 agreement, known as the Murree Declaration, to the reinstatement by 30 April 2008 of 60 judges previously sacked by Musharraf. The deadline was later extended to 12 May. He and Sharif held unsuccessful talks at London in May. After the coalition failed to restore the judiciary, the PML-N withdrew from the government in mid-May, pulling its ministers out of the cabinet. The coalition regrouped, again with the PML-N, and proposed a constitutional amendment that would remove the power of the President to dismiss Parliament. By late May, the coalition was set in a confrontation with Musharraf. At the same time, the government was successful in getting Pakistan readmitted to the Commonwealth.

He and Sharif met in Lahore in June 2008 to discuss Musharraf's removal and the constitutional amendments, which the PML-N viewed as not going far enough to fulfill the Murree declaration. He opposed impeachment calls because he claimed the coalition did not have the two-thirds majority in both legislative bodies—National Assembly and Senate. He was unwilling to restore the judiciary as divisions in the coalition grew and popular sentiment shifted towards Sharif.

In August 2008, Zardari relented, and the coalition agreed to proceed, full speed towards Musharraf's impeachment by drafting a charge-sheet against him. The coalition charged him with high treason for the 1999 coup and the imposition of martial law. He warned Musharraf against dismissing Parliament, and the coalition selected Gillani instead of Musharraf to represent Pakistan at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. On 18 August, Musharraf resigned in order to avoid impeachment.

Presidential elections were held within three weeks after the departure of Musharraf. Zardari vowed to pursue an unpopular campaign against tribal militancy in Pakistan and had the support of the United States. He was endorsed by the PPP and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) for the presidency. The PML-N nominated former justice Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui, while the PML-Q put forth Mushahid Hussain Sayed. Zardari won a majority in the Electoral College with 481 of 702 votes and was elected President on 6 September 2008.