Bhutto Not What Media & Bush Admin. Claimed

Bhutto Not What Media & Bush Admin. Claimed

Tuesday, 1 January 2008, 8:40 am

Benazir Bhutto Not What the Media and Bush Administration Claimed

By Saleeem Khan, Ph.D.

The violent death of Benazir Bhutto on December 27, is the latest event

in a culture of violence that has been steadily spreading in the body

politics in Pakistan.

Ms. Bhutto's assassination took place in Liaqat Park 28 years after the

execution in April 1979 of her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a

democratically elected prime minister of Pakistan, at the hands of a

military dictator. The prison where his execution was carried out is

hardly a mile away from the Liaqat Park, a site where the first prime

minister of Pakistan, Liaqat Ali Khan, fell to an assassin's bullet 28

years earlier in October 1951. A power struggle among the ruling elite

was said to be the cause of the Liaqat tragedy, but that killing was

never professionally investigated and I doubt very much that her tragic

demise will ever be.

These and numerous other tragic events in the 60 year history of

Pakistan are of far reaching national and international consequences

because Pakistan occupies a strategic position in a very volatile

region. These events imperil national, regional and international peace.

The magnified exposure of these tragic events in the world media is

closely linked to protecting western interests fails to adequately

express concern for the safety and welfare of Pakistan and its people.

I have known both Bhuttos personally for over a quarter century. I met

Ms. Bhutto for the first time in 1984 in New York when she was invited

to meet with a politically active group of young Pakistanis. My meeting

with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was arranged on August 1974, in the Prime

Minister's house in Rawalpindi. Subsequently I maintained contacts with

both of them. I served as an economic advisor in his administration from

1975 to 1977. Memories of a long relationship and my observation of

their tenure as public servants are still fresh in my mind. Both leaders

were idols of the people and had developed close bonds with the poor and

dispossessed.

Ms. Bhutto had inherited her father's legacy as a political leader of

the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) which he had founded in 1967, and the

mission of democracy and economic reform which he planned for his

nation. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was an astute politician, possessing

Clintonian talents and a statesman of international stature. He had made

the mission of his life to serve the poor and downtrodden and worked

tirelessly in promoting international cooperation and world peace. In

both my meeting with him on August 8, 1974, and the subsequent contacts

which I maintained with the Bhutto family he spoke of his agenda of

political and economic reforms and the difficulties he was encountering

in their implementation. He went on to reiterate his commitment to make

a difference in the lives of the common man and peace with India at any

cost and sacrifice. His economic reforms, as he explained to me, aimed

at providing the basic necessities of life--bread, clothing, shelter--to

the poor of Pakistan, but were negated by bureaucratic controls and

conspiracies by the feudal lobby. The three sins that made him a pariah

among international powers were his nuclear program, an Islamic summit,

and the drive for third world unity. These programs drew strong

opposition from the western world in general and the US in particular.

For these sins, as the world events have witnessed, he paid with his life.

Bhutto had trained Benazir from his prison cell to pick up the pieces of

his reforms and democracy and prepared her mentally for sacrifices that

she might have to make. In my meeting with her in New York she talked

about her commitment to the PPP's political and economic agenda

emphasizing the need for building a strong popular support and forging

unity among the ranks of party's leaders and workers.

Ms. Bhutto's day to govern the country came in 1988. On the strength of

her party's political and economic programs and with the support of the

people she was elected prime minister of Pakistan twice, first in 1988

and for a second term in 1993; each time her tenure lasted for two

years. Sadly she failed to demonstrate the qualities of a competent

governor for which her father had tried to prepare her, and she was

unable to achieve any worthwhile program for socio-economic progress.

She made herself the chairperson of the PPP for life, dominating the

decision making processes exhibiting little taste and patience for

democracy. In the government she developed a close alliance with the

bureaucratic establishment, surrounded herself with powerful feudal and

corrupt party leaders. She only paid lip service to educational programs

in general and female literacy in particular. During her tenure as prime

minister the economy was largely mismanaged, poverty rose and governance

standards deteriorated.

Much is made of her education at Harvard and Oxford preparing her to

meet the challenges of leadership in a modern world. Throughout her life

she remained beholden to feudal interests and preferred a life of "The

Rich and Famous." While in office, she and her husband, Asif Zardari,

according to the Pakistani media and the New York Times stole as much as

$1.5 billion from government accounts. Neither the people of Pakistan

nor the international media missed her during her eight years of self

exile. Only when Washington needed her as a front for democracy in

Pakistan did she reemerge as a political force by the international

media. She stridently defended the war against militancy and Al Qaeda

and seldom referred to the many other urgent problems facing the people

of Pakistan.

Pakistan is a country of 170 million people and they have never been

allowed to have a say in shaping their destiny. Without their active

participation in national affairs, stability and democracy is not

possible. Two fundamental conditions for creating stability and

democracy in Pakistan are critical. First, the country needs the rule of

law, and second, it must become a functioning democratic state. Without

reinstating the sacked justices of the Supreme Court and formation of a

national government able to conduct free and fair elections the rule of

law and democracy can not take hold in Pakistan. To tackle the militancy

and violence in Pakistan restoring the legitimacy of the Supreme Court

and installing an elected government in Islamabad are critical at this time.

The death of Benazir Bhutto and the current violence in its wake

provides an open opportunity for the ruling elite in Pakistan and their

international backers, to rethink the real issue of a stable and

democratic Pakistan. The need to make these necessary evolutionary

changes is ever more urgent

[Dr. Khan is Chair of the Department of Economics at Bloomsburg

University of Pennsylvania, and former economic advisor to Prime

Minister Z.A. Bhutto.]

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