Musharraf Wins Ugly

The election of President Pervez Musharraf's candidate for Prime Minister of Pakistan is a big victory for Musharraf, and for U.S. efforts to retain Pakistan's support in the war against terror. Zafarullah Khan Jamali, 58, a tribal chieftain from Baluchistan, narrowly defeated his closest rival, a pro-Taliban preacher. But his slim, one-vote majority reeked of political bullying and dealmaking. It was an arrangement rigged outside Parliament, struck in lengthy telephone calls to an exiled politician hoping for a comeback and, a losing candidate claims, tainted by bribes and threats.

Since Pakistan's parliamentary elections in October, Musharraf has faced growing opposition in the National Assembly. Jamali's party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid), which Musharraf hoped would do his bidding, fell far short of a majority, and the President has had to contend with angry anti-American clergymen and wily old pols from parties that he tried to crush.

Benazir Bhutto, the exiled former Prime Minister and leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), joined the fray. In a challenge to Musharraf, Bhutto was prepared to cast aside her pro-Western views and instruct her party to back the Islamic religious parties' candidate for Prime Minister, Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Musharraf moved fast. First, his aides released Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zardari from his hospital jail, where he had been held on charges of corruption, and allowed him to visit his dying mother in Karachi.

At one stage, a government source says, Musharraf's political fixers tried to win over Bhutto by offering to drop corruption charges against her and her husband. Under the deal, the insider says, Zardari would be freed and sent into exile while Bhutto would be allowed back into Pakistan after two years to resume politics. In the end, losing ppp candidate Shah Mahmood Quereshi has alleged publicly, Musharraf turned to simpler tactics: using threats and bribes to persuade a few of Bhutto's assemblymen to switch loyalties and vote for Jamali.