FORMER Pakistan prime minister and chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party, Benazir Bhutto, has called for a probe into the corruption charges against Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf and his family members.
“General Musharraf has stopped filing annual assets reports and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has not bothered to investigate the charges of corruption my party had filed against the president,” Benazir, who had been twice Pakistan’s prime minister, told Gulf Times in an interview.
She questioned the president’s right to pardon Abdul Qadir Khan, the disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist who was found running a nuclear black market.
“Khan had amassed wealth over $400mn through illegal means and letting him off the hook shows the president’s scant respect for the rule of law,” she said.
Calling the present Cabinet led by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz as a group of opportunists, Benazir said those who plundered the national banks and those who had skeletons in their cupboards have all found places in the government.
“It saddens me to see so many politicians, some of them my own former partymen, joining the military bandwagon just to escape judicial prosecution. They just switched sides to save their skin,” she said.
Benazir lambasted the Musharraf government for seizing the ancestral property of some politicians while it allowed the corrupt ones to run the country. “I will not be intimidated by such tactics as I know that nobody takes property into the grave.”
Asked why the military is able to sabotage the democratic institutions in Pakistan so often, she said it was because the judiciary has failed to protect the Constitution.
“In Pakistan, there is a constituency of vested interests whose only chance to be in government or to attain wealth lies in military dictatorships. To compound the matter, the judicial system has been unable to balance the civil society.”
Benazir said the people of Pakistan have been fighting for over half a century to get rid of “military colonialism”.
“I salute the people of Pakistan for their courage and perseverance. They have been fighting for gender equality and their right to live in peace and dignity while armed criminal gangs have made life miserable for the ordinary people,” she said.
To a question why the West, which preaches democracy, does not practise it in case of Pakistan, Bhutto said that her country’s geographically strategic position was much to be blamed for the Western support to military dictatorships.
“General Muhsharraf has exploited the hunt for Al Qaeda leaders like Osama bin Laden and others to sustain his own military dictatorship in the name of fighting the war against terrorism.” 
However, she said the US, the EU and the Commonwealth have reaffirmed their support for democratic reforms in Pakistan.
Asked her plans to return to Pakistan, the former prime minister, who has been living in exile for about a decade, said she would go to her country before the 2007 parliamentary elections. “It is an opportunity for the transition of military rule to democracy and that must be exploited,” Benazir said.
According to her, President Musharraf who seized power in a coup is a military dictator who has achieved legitimacy because of his role in the war against terror.
“For the people of Pakistan, he is a military dictator who rules through unconstitutional means by occupying the office of army chief and using it to buttress his control of political power.” 
Benazir said the military regime’s aim was to eliminate moderate political parties.
“It was unfortunate that the judiciary is misused for unjust acts. The law is butchered to secure a political result. My father was assassinated by using trumped up charges because he could not be defeated through political means.”
The PPP leader said the military regime has used the judiciary to blackmail her and force her to give up her support for a democratic government.
“To that end my husband was in prison for eight years without conviction and to this day the regime tries to intimidate or blackmail me through the abuse of the judicial system.”
Replying to a question about her strategy to fight the 2007 elections, Bhutto said the PPP has joined the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy in Pakistan and the group has been working in co-ordination in the parliament and outside it. “There is a broad agreement among us for the need to end the military rule and the restoration of the Constitution as it existed in 1999.”
But Benazir said she was apprehensive of the present government led by prime minister being able to conduct free and fair elections. “Elections must be held under a national government of consensus.”
Bhutto was in Doha to attend the US-Islamic World Forum. She left for Dubai yesterday afternoon.