Benazir Bhutto will be remembered only and forever as a martyr, not just by her own party but by every politically conscious person in this singularly blighted land. Whatever her motivation — ideological belief, spirit of defiance, or just plain stubbornness
BENAZIR Bhutto will be remembered only and forever as a martyr, not just by her own party but by every politically conscious person in this singularly blighted land. Whatever her motivation — ideological belief, spirit of defiance, or just plain stubbornness — she stuck to her appointed task to the very end and left a mark on Pakistan’s political map that no generalissimo or government flunkey can ever airbrush out of history. All shortcomings, real or contrived, will be forgiven and forgotten. Starting in life as the daughter of a titan as towering as Zulfikar Ali Bhutto she became in due course a force in her own right. Given her extraordinary privilege, the options before Benazir Bhutto were limitless, yet she chose a life that was marked so much more by struggle than acquiescence. She was her father’s chosen successor in a family with feudal underpinnings and two able-bodied sons.
This was and continues to be a glaring exception in the patriarchal and misogynistic order that sadly rules our lives to this day in the 21st century. As a teenager she accompanied her father to Shimla where Pakistan and India negotiated the unfinished business of the war of 1971. Benazir’s presence alongside her father at this crucial point in history set the stage for her political career. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was smarter than most people and he made his intentions clear at the outset, in no uncertain terms. His daughter went on to the hallowed halls of Radcliffe and Oxford.
When Z.A. Bhutto was killed by presidential order, she chose imprisonment over exile in plush surroundings. She needn’t have done that but she did. And what adulation she got in return. Throngs of admirers followed her wherever she went during the course of her political struggle. Poignantly, the flood of tears as she was laid to rest besides her father on Friday was but a manifestation of this adulation.
There are questions to be answered by people we suffer today in the name of national interest and ‘Pakistan-first’. Benazir Bhutto was apparently never given the security she requested following her much-criticised agreement with Pervez Musharraf which facilitated her return to Pakistan after eight years in exile. Why not? The detractors of the current dispensation will ask if the death of Pakistan’s most internationally recognisable, and outspokenly secular, leader in any way benefits those who have seemingly convinced the Bush administration that only they stand between the Taliban and the nuclear button.
More questions will inevitably follow when the statement of day one that Ms Bhutto was killed by gunfire is changed the next day by the interior minister to say that that the former prime minister’s killing was the result of a shrapnel injury. Why wasn’t a scientific attempt made to ascertain the exact cause of her death as would have happened anywhere else in the world? This may have been the result of nervousness or ineptitude on the part of the administration but will lead to more questions. Was the killer actually the suicide bomber? Or was there a sniper somewhere out of sight?
The nation’s attention will remain focused now on Ms Bhutto’s assassination and it will obviously be distracted from the issues that have occupied centre-stage for months now. Agreed, that this is not the time to raise contentious issues. It is time to grieve. But once the emotion dies down it should be recognised, calmly and coolly, that the status quo cannot persist. As a nation we have to get our heads round the fact that change is inevitable.
This tragedy ought to be the catalyst for this change. As we move forward we would do well to remember that Benazir Bhutto and her party represented politics of the federation of Pakistan. In these troubled times, this is of paramount importance. Her supporters appeared equally committed to her cause — or their collective cause — whether she was in Peshawar, Quetta, Karachi, Rawalpindi, Lahore or Larkana. The way forward, in terms of toppling dictatorship, lies not in burning buses. Instead we all need to reflect dispassionately and, once and for all, decide as a nation where to point the finger.
The sins of politicians are, almost without exception, said to be grave and despicable. But there is a tendency, almost inbred, which we must check if we are to move forward as a nation and in due course pin the blame where it ought to be affixed. It is not the politicians who have let this country down. They have never been allowed a free hand in the running of Pakistan even when they were elected by the people. Can they still be blamed?