| Editorial
1 January 2008
Benazir Bhutto in her student
days. She would have easily passed as the girl next door.
( click to see note)
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A death is always tragic, particularly when it
is untimely and brought on by acts of criminals. A family has lost
a mother and wife in such manner and that is a colossal misfortune.
Does that make Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto a champion of democracy?
The short answer is no.
She was arguably the first woman head of government in a part of
the world which, for centuries, has been under the subjugation of
an ideology that treats women as sex objects, wrapped in masses
of clothes in case they drive "innocent" men to commit
rape. Days before her murder, she may have said that Pakistan’s
medrassas turned children into killers. The politically
correct establishment here in the West may feel that she was as
good as the girl next door because she studied at old universities
in England and America. She may have contested Western-style elections
for a parliament loosely modelled after the one at Westminster.
All these may be true and yet it did not make Bhutto a democrat.
She was twice prime minister of Pakistan, a godforsaken country
that experienced only a few years of elected civilian government
in the sixty years of its wretched existence. Twice she was removed
from office after she and her husband were accused of corruption
and embezzlement. She gained the premiership only because she was
the daughter of her father, who was removed from office and hanged
after being accused of complicity in a murder.
The incredible opulence of her homes, both at home and in exile,
was akin to those of Mughal colonialists who ruled over India before
being displaced by the British. Her father’s mausoleum rivals
the Taj Mahal, the most well-known structure left behind
by the Islamic Mughal colonialists.
She was the leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, campaigning
for what is labelled a “democratic” election. And did
those Pakistan “People” or their Party have anything
to do with choosing her successor? No.
The successor was chosen according to her last will and testament.
This was read out by her son who, together with her husband, was
named respectively chairman and interim co-chairman of the party.
This is how we dispose of our worldly possessions here in the West;
not how we run a parliamentary democracy.
In days gone by when kings died leaving an under-aged heir, the
dowager queen was appointed regent until the heir came of age. That
was exactly what happened in the case of the Bhutto succession in
Pakistan.
The son and heir was below the age of eligibility for election to
parliament and is still attending Oxford in order to establish his
credentials in the West. So the mother, in her will, ordered her
supposedly democratic party to accept a “regent” in
the interim in the person of her husband. The dynastic nature of
the succession was further enhanced by the son being ordered, in
his mother’s will, to take on her own ancestral family name.
Bhutto is dead! Long live Bhutto!
On 8 July 2008, we received an email from a reader who
wrote the following, after he "had checked" with
a very close friend of Miss Bhutto's and her party's
coordinator in a Persian Gulf sheikhdom:
"I have been told and confirmed that the photo dates
not from her student days (which would be the 70s) but
the late 90s, when Benazir was in Dubai after she left
her home country to stay there. Benazir was Prime Minister
until early 1997 so this would be between 1998 and 2000.
Just wanted to mention this error."
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