Pakistan's new president Asif Ali Zardari was once so tainted by corruption allegations that he acquired the nickname "Mr Ten Percent" among his countrymen and beyond. But the judicial charges and political battles that saw Benazir Bhutto's widower spend 11 years in jail had no bearing on today's presidential election, and an amnesty last year cleared him of remaining charges.
A secret ballot of the country's two houses of parliament and four provincial assemblies saw Zardari succeed Pervez Musharraf, who was forced to resign last month under threat of impeachment.
Zardari's life journey has taken him from playboy to villain to political heir of the revered Bhutto, whose image still casts a shadow over daily life here nine months after her assassination.
Among the 168 million people of nuclear-armed Pakistan, however, there are doubts over Zardari's suitability for a role that would allow him to dismiss governments and appoint leaders of the country's powerful military.
"Mr. Zardari has a controversial reputation. He has been charged, among other things, with corruption, extortion and murder," Shafqat Mahmood, a former MP and now political analyst, told AFP ahead of today's vote.
"In the minds of many, he is neither clean nor innocent, and this is a huge drawback in his being a candidate for the highest office in the land."
Nor has Zardari overcome the view that he was heavily responsible for the ills that befell his wife as prime minister.
The 53-year-old has always maintained the cases against him were politically motivated, and none were proven.
When he married into the Bhutto dynasty in 1987, Zardari was the little-known scion of a land-owning polo-playing family from southern Sindh province.
But he quickly carved out a powerful position for himself as a government minister, taking a keen interest in the finance and environmental portfolios.
He was among the first people arrested when his wife's governments were thrown out of office, in what remains an uncomfortable reminder of his notoriety.
The first time, in 1990, he spent three years in jail before rejoining Bhutto's second administration. But he was back behind bars within half an hour of that government's dismissal in 1996.
Zardari then spent 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.
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