Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari has suggested that he might be interested in premiership if the PPP was elected to power in the elections because he “has the widest name recognition in the party”, according to a recent Newsweek report. In a telephonic interview with Newsweek on Monday, Zardari said there was no single personality in the PPP, apart from him, who anybody even knew. According to the magazine, Zardari directed that a copy of former premier Benazir Bhutto’s will be made public to prove that she named him as her successor, after facing a whispering campaign at home that he might not be Benazir’s legitimate heir.
Addressing party office-bearers, Benazir wrote in her will that, “I would like my husband ... Zardari to lead you in this interim period until you and he decide what is best,” the magazine quoted her handwritten will. “Zardari is considered a mistrusted — and divisive — figure in Pakistan. He is widely blamed for the tangle of corruption that strangled and cut short Benazir’s terms in office,” according to the magazine.