Pakistan mourns
Updated: 2007-12-30 16:24
How to process the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto? First comes revulsion at the images of twisted limbs and wreckage. Next - depression and grief. Eventually - the necessary introspection and research to gain some clue as the country burns and the death toll rises.
On one side we are told that Al Qaeda wanted her gone. Others opine that it was President Musharraf who sought to benefit from her departure. Look deeper it emerges even business leaders may have been silently hoping for 54-year-old Bhutto to slip away.
Last month the Sydney Morning Herald ran an article titled, “Why Bhutto would be bad for business”. It was an expose’ that was anything but complimentary for her previous political performance.
Nevertheless to her credit she was able to garner growing support from many world leaders. US President Bush referred to her as a bastion for democracy.
Looking back it seems she had this penchant for splitting opinion. This attribute and a passion for politics were in the genes and the way she passed away was also nothing new for a bloodline bedeviled by violence commencing two generations earlier.
Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto her grandfather, was a senior player in the Pakistan Muslim League. Going against the grain of thought held by Mahatma Gandhi, this group was instrumental in the separation of Pakistan from India back in 1947.
Benazir’s father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto also went into politics serving as the president of Pakistan from 1971 to 1973 and as prime minister from 1973 to 1977. It was he who founded the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), which her daughter was to later lead.
Unlike the majority of her country folk Benazir enjoyed a life of privilege. During the time her father was leader she first went to Harvard and then spent four years at Oxford.
She doggedly sought the presidency for the Oxford Student Union unsuccessfully for three years until finally being elected.
Around this time tragedy struck in 1979 when her dad was sentenced to death and hung back in Pakistan. It was alleged he had authorized the murder of a political opponent’s father. With time her two brothers were also to suffer violent deaths.
Taking over the leadership of the PPP in 1988 Benazir was elected the Islamic world's first female prime minister at the youthful age of 35. This victory was short-lived. 20 months later she was removed from office on accusations of corruption.
Perhaps it was too much too soon though five years later and a bit more hardened she was elected prime minister again, this time holding office for three years. However her report card this time around was even more damning than the first.
Fortune Magazine’s South East Asian correspondent Eric Ellis mentioned last month that many minds were thinking “a third Bhutto term is about the worst thing that could happen to Pakistan, bearing in mind that it was during her second term that the Pakistan-raised and funded Taliban consumed Afghanistan.”
For all the criticism Musharraf attracts his tenure has been a league above his predecessors, bringing stability and economic progress. Though Hilary Clinton last week cited Pakistan as the nation, which scares her most in regards to America’s security, on paper it appears Musharraf brings the stability outside investors seek.
In 2000, the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote one of the first things Musharraf did to try and clean out corruption from Pakistan was to publicly vow to disclose his tax returns - in response to the previous “massive corruption”. He acknowledged the ex-military man was well aware of the need to globalize and implement the necessary framework to attract foreign investment and leverage its citizens out of poverty. A desire Bhutto also sought but was unable to fulfill.
With shares taking a dive following Bhutto’s assassination the suggestion that the business savvy Musharraf was the mastermind behind her murder appear shortsighted.
And while Benazir Bhutto may have been derided for her business acumen and ability to manage the nation her love for her country and courage was never really in question. She knew she was jumping into the fire. She spoke recently of the possibility of death as she went back on the election trail in her stated quest for a Pakistan that “puts the welfare of its people as the centerpiece of its national policy”.
Perhaps more of an idealist than a pragmatist in an interview with More Magazine in October she spoke of her love for home, “I miss the scent of the rain when it falls on the dusty roads… And the wheat crops in flower. I miss the people; I miss all of our rituals - visiting the graves of our forefathers."
She returned forever Friday to the family mausoleum in her native Sindh province.
The opinion represents that of the columnist only.
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