The Bhutto-Zardari marriage is over, according to an article in the Indian magazine Outlook by Mariana Babar, a Pakistani female journalist friendly with Benazir Bhutto. According to Ms Babar, “a little over two years from that heady, emotional November, as we settle into 2007, a chill seems to have seeped into the romantic saga that the Benazir-Zardari matrimony has always been for this country. The fizz has gone out of the love story, Benazir and Zardari don’t live together, their marriage is an empty shell, a partnership of pretences, a form they must maintain because Pakistan, like much of South Asia, can’t accept a woman politician divorced from her husband. You could say it’s a separation that’s still dressed as marriage.
“For months now, the souring of the Benazir-Zardari saga has been the staple of whispers in PPP circles. The buzz attained credibility in November last year when an English daily led its front page with the bruising header: ‘Benazir desperately trying to save her marriage’. The PPP didn’t issue any denials. Last year too, in a money-laundering case filed by the earlier Nawaz Sharif government, Benazir told a Swiss court that she wasn’t associated with offshore companies being investigated for their links to Zardari. The statement was perceived as an attempt on her part to distance herself from her husband.
“A prominent Pakistani close to both Zardari and Benazir, who too now lives abroad, says: ‘The marriage is over. Both have decided to get on with life and live in countries of their own choosing. There has even been a distribution of assets; that’s why her statement last year to the Swiss court.’ But this doesn’t mean Benazir will legally formalise the split—and it isn’t only because of the political factor. As a lady friend of Benazir’s told Outlook, ‘Benazir is too conservative to go in for a divorce. Once, till late in the night, she kept advising me against seeking divorce.’
“There are, however, incontrovertible signs of their marriage being on the rocks if not totally kaput. For one, Benazir lives in Dubai, Zardari in a New York apartment with his dogs. His friends there invite sneers from the extremely class-conscious Pakistanis. As a former foreign secretary told this correspondent, ‘We were having dinner at this posh restaurant and in walked Asif with a group of men who would never be seen in polite company.’ Influential expat Pakistanis say Benazir did not stay with her husband when she visited the Big Apple last September, choosing instead to reside with a friend there. The PPP explained it saying she needed a larger space for party work,” writes Babar.