‘Mr. 10 percent’: Pakistan’s president haunted by graft allegations for two decades

Under fire Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari is a widely reviled politician so haunted by corruption allegations spanning over two decades that he has earned the moniker "Mr. 10 Percent".

Widower of popular twice-elected prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a gun and suicide attack in 2007, the former playboy’s colorful past includes 11 years in jail on charges ranging from corruption to murder.

And still the mercurial 56-year-old is fending off graft allegations as the Supreme Court pressures his weak government to re-open corruption cases against him.

Zardari is also under pressure from judges investigating a memo seeking Washington’s help in curbing the powerful military after the humiliation of the covert American operation last May that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

But he is nothing if not a survivor.

Despite spending a week in a Dubai hospital last month, he faced down frenzied speculation of his imminent demise and has won praise even among his detractors for his wily determination and nous in holding onto office.

Zardari’s life journey has taken him from good-time boy to villain to political heir of the revered Bhutto, whose image still casts a shadow over daily life, more than four years after her assassination.

Born on July 26, 1955 into a land-owning, polo-playing family from the southern province of Sindh, Zardari was educated in Pakistan and went on to study business in London, although he never graduated from university.

Little-known at the time of his arranged marriage into the Bhutto dynasty in 1987, he carved out a powerful position for himself, serving as a government minister under his wife’s two administrations.

He says all the charges against him have been politically motivated and he has never been convicted by a court. Nevertheless, he went to prison for three years in 1990, before rejoining Bhutto’s second administration.

He was back behind bars within half an hour of her government’s dismissal in 1996.

Zardari spent the next eight years in jail -- five of them while his family lived in exile -- before being freed in November 2004 after being cleared over the last of 17 cases of corruption, murder and drug smuggling.

In October 2007, his wife returned home. Two months later, she was killed in an attack on a political rally in Rawalpindi while Zardari was living abroad.

Her assassination stunned the world, plunged Pakistan into mourning and propelled Zardari out of the shadows and into the political limelight.

Kept at bay for years by his wife’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which was uncomfortable with his shady reputation, Zardari took control as co-chairman alongside his then teenage son, who is still too young to seek election.

The PPP unanimously supported Zardari’s candidacy for the president -- at least partly in tribute to the sacrifices of his wife -- after the party won the 2008 election.

Assuming office in September 2008 as the country’s 14th president, Zardari’s government rapidly courted fierce criticism over expanding Islamist militancy and economic turmoil, sending his approval ratings plummeting.

The rapprochement that his administration had seen with the United States has since been overshadowed by a disastrous decline in relations over the bin Laden raid and U.S. air strikes in November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

Perhaps his biggest achievement, other than clinging onto office, was to hand over sweeping powers in 2010 to the prime minister through the restoration of the parliamentary constitution.

The 18th amendment rolled back four decades of infringements by military rulers.