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Zardari’s past returns to haunt him

ISLAMABAD: Asif Ali Zardari’s past is returning to haunt him as he makes a bid for the top office in the country.

A rival candidate in the September 6 presidential election, Mushahid Hussain Sayed of the Pakistan Muslim League (Q), has demanded Mr. Zardari quit the race because of doubts over his mental fitness.

PPP managers have been kept busy denying the “mental incapacity” of their leader after reports surfaced earlier this week that as recently as last year, he had asked to be excused from appearing in a London court where he was facing corruption charges on grounds of mental illness.

The Financial Times reported that Mr. Zardari’s doctor submitted to the court in March 2007 that his client was suffering from a range of pyschiatric illnesses, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, dementia, and memory and concentration problems.

The New York-based doctor also submitted that he did not foresee any improvement in Mr. Zardari’s condition for at least a year. Information Minister Sherry Rehman said on Friday depression could happen to anybody who had been placed in solitary confinement as Mr. Zardari was. But, she said, it had had no impact on his mental abilities. She also denied that he had ever suffered from dementia.

Earlier this week, the Pakistan High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Wajid Shamsul Hassan told the Financial Times that Mr. Zardari was mentally fit.

Mr. Syed told journalists on Friday that Pakistan needed “a non-controversial personality” to head it through this critical phase in its history.

He said numerous reports published in local and international press about Mr. Zardari’s corruption and mental health had created a controversy over his candidature.

Mr. Sayed appealed to him to withdraw his candidature from the presidential elections “in the national interest, to strengthen democracy and for the future of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party”.

The PML(Q) candidate also raised questions about the source of Mr. Zardari’s accounts that were recently freed by the Swiss authorities.

Mr. Sayed vociferously denied the wide predictions that he would withdraw his candidature on Saturday, the day for withdrawal of nominations, and said he was going to “fight it out”.

Mr. Zardari himself has moved from his private home in the capital to the Prime Minister’s House for security reasons, reportedly after his comments about the Taliban and the consequent ban on the Tehreeek-i-Taliban.

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