Accretion of wealth is an art-form in Pakistan

Fakir Syed Aijazuddin When a prime minister marries, it is his or her own business.  It is no concern of the state. When that marriage becomes itself a business, then polity has every right to be concerned.
Even loyalists in the PPP cannot deny that when Mr. Asif Ali Zardari married Ms. Benazir Bhutto in December 1987 ‘for richer or for poorer’, she was the richer and he the poorer.
If the declaration of assets disclosed by the Election Commission of Pakistan for the last general election is to be believed, he the grieving widower is now the richer and their son, infinitely richer.
Pakistan is a nation in which the unexplained accretion of wealth is an art-form. It can boast more artistry than the Louvre in Paris or the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.  Even after three years in government (though not always in control), the PTI’s election promises of an Augean sweep of accountability remains a slogan, an un-dispelled cloud reeking above a populace struggling to breathe cleaner air.
While the prime minister himself may be above suspicion, rumours abound about the protective penumbra that surrounds his court. They hint at dark influences, of planetary forces. He would not be the first to suffer such jeers.
In the 1900s, the Romanovs had Rasputin whose hold over the Czarina Alexandra and her haemophiliac son Alexis was one factor that contributed to the collapse of the Russian monarchy. In the 1950s, the Dutch throne was shaken when Queen Juliana allowed the faith healer Greet Hofmans — ‘a militant pacifist with a penchant for the occult’ – to compromise her royal position.