In Pakistan, Bhutto Is the Issue as Campaign Ignores Major Problems : Politics: The race is not a kind, gentle exercise as competing criminal charges pass for political discourse.

MORO, Pakistan —  At nearly midnight and still two campaign speeches from sleep, Benazir Bhutto had a voice that was hoarse, hair caked with dust and fingers nervously worrying a string of blue prayer beads.

But the ousted prime minister suddenly leaned over on a crowded rally stage to confide the obvious: The race for Pakistan’s national elections next Wednesday is no kinder, gentler exercise in democracy.

“There’s been lots of pre-election rigging,” she said. “Many people have been arrested. Money has been dished out to buy votes. Polling places have been changed. Identity cards have been confiscated. People have been intimidated. That’s what my opponents are doing.”

Not surprisingly, one of her chief opponents disagrees. In a separate interview, interim Prime Minister Gulam Mustafa Jatoi accused Bhutto and her Pakistan People’s Party of their own depredations.

“She is the root cause of all evil,” said Jatoi, munching a cake after his sparsely attended rally in nearby Padidan. “Now they want to prove that law and order under us is no better than under them. So they are behind kidnaping of children--yes, kidnaping!”

In a country long used to political violence, most of the charges are nothing new. Indeed, several political groups appear responsible for about 35 reported abductions of businessmen and students in Karachi, Pakistan’s financial hub.

“The word on the street is the kidnapings are to raise funds for the campaigns,” one Western diplomat said. “The other word is intimidation. One guy’s son was kidnaped to get him to give evidence against Bhutto’s husband.”

So goes Pakistan’s rough-and-tumble scramble for political power, 10 weeks after the modern Islamic world’s first woman prime minister was abruptly sacked amid charges of corruption, nepotism and incompetence. It is a campaign where competing criminal charges pass for political discourse.

So far the army, which has ruled Pakistan for 25 of its 43 years, has stayed in the background. But Jatoi’s army-backed government has charged Bhutto with corruption and abuse of power in six special criminal court cases.

Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, was jailed last week in Karachi for allegedly kidnaping a Pakistan-born British citizen and extorting $800,000 from him. Zardari’s father and Bhutto’s mother, both also linked to alleged corruption schemes, have fled to London.

Partially as a result, Bhutto’s 20-month administration, whose dismissal was again upheld Thursday by a Pakistani court, is the only issue in the battle for control of the 217-seat National Assembly, the policy-making lower house of Parliament.

All sides agree that next week’s election will be a referendum on Bhutto’s scandal-plagued tenure, rather than her scandal-plagued would-be successors.

“The only issue is her failure to govern the country, her corruption and her failure to maintain law and order,” Jatoi asserted.

“The only issue is Benazir’s love for the people and the caretaker government’s illegal persecution of her,” countered Nafees Siddiqi, a Bhutto party spokesman.

Jatoi, an avuncular figure who is one of Pakistan’s largest landlords, was appointed prime minister in August even though voters in his home constituency, Sind, had voted him out of office. After winning another seat, he flooded his district with 120 electricity projects and more than 1,000 jobs.

Bhutto’s other main rival is Nawaz Sharif, a pudgy Punjab industrialist who heads a factious anti-Bhutto opposition coalition.

None of the candidates has offered programs or solutions to the nation’s more pressing problems, including one of the world’s highest birthrates and lowest life expectancies. About 85% of Pakistani women are illiterate and less than half the 107 million people have clean water, while two-thirds of the rural population has no access to health services.

Nor have the candidates focused on Washington’s suspension of aid last week. Nearly $600 million is frozen until the White House can certify that Islamabad has curtailed a reputed nuclear weapons program.

“Nobody’s talking any substance,” a second Western diplomat said. “Kashmir continues to fester. The economy is going to hell. Corruption is worse than ever. And they just lost half a billion in foreign aid. Yet none of these are issues. The only issue is, do you support Benazir or don’t you?”

It appears that a growing number do. Although she may yet be arrested or banned from political office, Bhutto’s campaign has capitalized on her family’s trials and tribulations, which she invariably portrays as persecution by her political enemies.

“She’s playing on the sympathy vote,” Zahid Hussain, a political journalist, said. “And in some areas at least, it’s working.”

At Nawabshah, where Bhutto’s husband is running for a seat against Jatoi’s son, Bhutto aides charged that 100 party and polling booth workers have been jailed without cause. Aijaz Shah, one 26-year-old landowner there, said his father and uncle were hiding to avoid arrest.

“They are underground,” he said. “Jatoi’s people say if we don’t vote for them, they take our land and we are arrested and jailed. But we say no. So they must hide.”

In two court appearances, Bhutto has pleaded not guilty. Charges against the 37-year-old Oxford and Radcliffe university graduate involve the award of sweetheart cotton export contracts and a consultant’s position in a power project funded by the Asian Development Bank. Each deal cost the government $4.6 million, prosecutors said.

Bhutto also was charged with improperly approving a proposed hotel and golf course project on government land near Islamabad at a fraction of market rates, and of bypassing two dozen applicants to give lucrative marketing rights for liquid petroleum gas to a cousin, a family friend and two political allies.

Two charges added Wednesday center on allegations that she misused intelligence funds and improperly used military and government planes to transport members of Parliament during a no-confidence vote last November.

Her husband, previously charged with bank fraud and illegal weapons possession, was arrested Oct. 10 in Karachi and remains jailed there.

Available information suggests that evidence of his role in the kidnaping is mostly hearsay, but the government’s special “accountability” tribunals are heavily weighted against the defendant. Unlike Pakistan’s regular legal system, bail is barred and the defendant must prove his or her own innocence.

That innocence is not in doubt, Bhutto said in an interview. She accused her opponents of arresting her husband “to undermine his election campaign” and to “demoralize and depress” party workers and supporters.

“They wanted to keep me preoccupied and worried and unable to concentrate on the campaign,” Bhutto said. “But my husband is only winning more votes from his arrest. Our party workers will not stop. And while I am preoccupied, I don’t let it stop me from the campaign. How can I?”