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Title: Aunt Benazir's false promises -- Bhutto's return bodes poorly for Pakistan -- and for democracy there
Source:
ICH
URL Source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18965.htm
Published: Dec 28, 2007
Author: Fatima Bhutto
Post Date: 2007-12-28 19:34:10 by richard9151
Keywords: None
Views: 236
Comments: 11
12/13/07 "LA Times" - -- KARACHI -- We Pakistanis live in uncertain times. Emergency rule has been imposed for the 13th time in our short 60-year history. Thousands of lawyers have been arrested, some charged with sedition and treason; the chief justice has been deposed; and a draconian media law -- shutting down all private news channels -- has been drafted. Perhaps the most bizarre part of this circus has been the hijacking of the democratic cause by my aunt, the twice-disgraced former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. While she was hashing out a deal to share power with Gen. Pervez Musharraf last month, she repeatedly insisted that without her, democracy in Pakistan would be a lost cause. The reality, however, is that there is no one better placed to benefit from emergency rule than she is. Along with the leaders of prominent Islamic parties, she has been spared the violent retributions of emergency law. Yes, she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does that really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her. She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference. (By contrast, the very suggestion that they might hold a news conference has placed hundreds of other political activists under real arrest, in real jails.) Ms. Bhutto's political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf's regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship. It is widely believed that Ms. Bhutto lost both her governments on grounds of massive corruption. She and her husband, a man who came to be known in Pakistan as "Mr. 10%," have been accused of stealing more than $1 billion from Pakistan's treasury. She is appealing a money-laundering conviction by the Swiss courts involving about $11 million. Corruption cases in Britain and Spain are ongoing. It was particularly unappealing of Ms. Bhutto to ask Musharraf to bypass the courts and drop the many corruption cases that still face her in Pakistan. He agreed, creating the odiously titled National Reconciliation Ordinance in order to do so. Her collaboration with him was so unsubtle that people on the streets are now calling her party, the Pakistan People's Party, the Pervez People's Party. Now she might like to distance herself, but it's too late. Why did Ms. Bhutto and her party cronies demand that her corruption cases be dropped, but not demand that the cases of activists jailed during the brutal regime of dictator Zia ul-Haq (from 1977 to 1988) not be quashed? What about the sanctity of the law? When her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto -- my father -- returned to Pakistan in 1993, he faced 99 cases against him that had been brought by Zia's military government. The cases all carried the death penalty. Yet even though his sister was serving as prime minister, he did not ask her to drop the cases. He returned, was arrested at the airport and spent the remaining years of his life clearing his name, legally and with confidence, in the courts of Pakistan. Ms. Bhutto's repeated promises to end fundamentalism and terrorism in Pakistan strain credulity because, after all, the Taliban government that ran Afghanistan was recognized by Pakistan under her last government -- making Pakistan one of only three governments in the world to do so. And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister's politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets. My father was Benazir's younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal convened after his death under the leadership of three respected judges concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a "much higher" political authority. I have personal reasons to fear the danger that Ms. Bhutto's presence in Pakistan brings, but I am not alone. The Islamists are waiting at the gate. They have been waiting for confirmation that the reforms for which the Pakistani people have been struggling have been a farce, propped up by the White House. Since Musharraf seized power in 1999, there has been an earnest grass-roots movement for democratic reform. The last thing we need is to be tied to a neocon agenda through a puppet "democrat" like Ms. Bhutto. By supporting Ms. Bhutto, who talks of democracy while asking to be brought to power by a military dictator, the only thing that will be accomplished is the death of the nascent secular democratic movement in my country. Democratization will forever be de-legitimized, and our progress in enacting true reforms will be quashed. We Pakistanis are certain of this. Fatima Bhutto is a Pakistani poet and writer. She is the daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed in 1996 in Karachi when his sister, Benazir, was prime minister.
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#1. To: richard9151, All (#0)
Bump
Republicans (Democrats for that matter) ....... HAD ENOUGH?
I defer to her eminently superior knowledge.
Her death like her political career was ridden with scandal and conflict: "'Everyone Wanted to Kill Her': Musharraf's regime offers its version of what-- and who--killed Bhutto" The doctors who treated Bhutto at Rawalpindi's state-run General Hospital held a televised press conference to refute reports that her death had been caused by bullets or shrapnel from the suicide bombing. "There were no wounds on her neck and no exit wound in her head," said one of the doctors. The official version blames Bhutto's death on a fatal blow. At a press conference in Islamabad and later on state-owned television, Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Cheema showed video footage of a beaming Bhutto seconds before she was killed, along with photographs of her blood-stained vehicle. He said Bhutto died when her head struck the sunroof doors of her customized SUV. "Three bullets were fired but missed her," he said. "She was ducking or was thrown by the shockwaves from the explosion, and her head struck one of the levers of the sunroof." Bhutto had appeared through the sunroof of her armored SUV to wave at supporters at the end of her election rally in Pakistan's military capital, Rawalpindi. The government's finding contradicts eyewitness accounts by Bhutto's aides, who said that two bullets struck Bhutto in the head and neck before the assassin detonated himself.
Shades of John F. Kennedy....... Now who you gonna believe..... their lying eyes, or, the government?
When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest.
richard: Shades of John F. Kennedy....... Now who you gonna believe..... their lying eyes, or, the government? The "eyes" who saw Bhutto felled by bullets were her aides. Perhaps they wanted to make her seem a martyr instead of telling the truth - that Bhutto suffered an unremarkable death due to clumsiness. Frankly I could care less what Bhutto died of. She was a dirty politician, installed as a puppet leader by the DC neocon punks. I tend to believe that she died as the Paki gov't says she died. Her husband and children are not saying she died a martyr - they would have viewed the body in the morgue before burial.
Her alleged 'dirtiness' no doubt was manufactured to get rid of her, I don't see any corruption charge as having standing. I liked her and am sorry she was brutally murdered. I don't believe in assasination as a tool to manage power. Regardless of your words, she is a martyr, and an icon for the good she represented, not for falsehood those who did her in may have manufactured.
I liked her and am sorry she was brutally murdered. I don't believe in assasination as a tool to manage power. Regardless of your words, she is a martyr, and an icon for the good she represented, not for falsehood those who did her in may have manufactured. The charges were dismissed because Rice twisted Musharef's arm to do so and not arrest her on her gala return. Her niece refused to talk to Bhutto for 10 years because she believed that Bhutto orchestrated her father's death ie. Bhutto allegedly had her brother killed because he was a political rival. Bhutto vigorously attacked Muslim extremists the past few months but in fact Bhutto gave material support to the Taliban ( hello fundie group par excellence!) when she was in office. Bhutto was re-made in the DC image of what a democracy angel would be like in their wacky minds. Mooshie is what he is - a military strongman - and he has not pretended to be anything else. We bought him and he served our needs. He's like an Uncle Saddam character. Bhutto was a refined aristocrat pretending to be what she was not - like the Maliki character. I think the Ford is every bit as serviceable as the Mercedes and much cheaper to boot. I think you are fooling yourself into believing that Bhutto was some type of democracy goddess for Pakistan. Bhutto was bought by the neocons lock stock and barrel. Right now they're furious, no doubt, that they did not get their money's worth - she died before she "recognized" the thugocracy queen, better known as Israel.
I know you are wrong, because you don't understand how strong my feelings regarding political assasination are. I mean, I was sympathetic and angry when a puppet and crook like Reagan was shot. I was sympathetic when Wallace was shot. When a leader is assassinated, they become martyrs regardless of the spin you or others may want to see regarding them. I support Martin Luther King Jr. day too and celebrate; not because I feel he was a perfect human being -- he wasn't -- but he stood for magnificant ideas and ideals, and it is his message that is being honored in the face of the tyrannical arrogance of those who would kill others to influence the political leadership of a country, or to try to kill their message. And what a fool's errand that latter motive for murder always is. My heart goes out to her family and supporters, and I consider her a martyr who with no concern for her own life put herself at risk of death in a very conscious manner, a manner that shows without doubt she had courage, and a highly developed sense of honor and personal commitment to her people and her country. My opinion is unwaverable, I find your spin interesting, but without legs or merit. With all due respect, mind you.
All the lawyer jokes I hear are so nasty compared to the politician jokes.
¿What's the difference? I do not understand. Since somewheres around 90-95% of ALL politicians are lawyers...... ¿What's the difference? Seems to me, the jokes are easily interchangeable.
When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest.
b. I liked her and am sorry she was brutally murdered. I don't believe in assasination as a tool to manage power. c. Regardless of your words, she is a martyr, and an icon for the good she represented, not for falsehood those who did her in may have manufactured. a. She was dirty as was her husband. That's business as usual in Pakistan, a very corrupt nation. b. You didn't know her. How can you "like" her? She died - we're not sure how it happened or who was responsible. c. A martyr to you not to me. She was an iconic figure in that she represented a long established political family in Pakistan. I don't think she represented good. At first glance she represented yet another bought out DC puppet like Musharef but her pedigree was better. Falsehoods manufactured about her? Hardly - she's being lionized for pretty words she said the past few months about democracy. and wanting to have Pakistan formally recognize Israel. Her actions - this time round- hardly existed but for words. The last time she was in power her gov't was corrupt - she supported the Taliban ( fundie Muslims) and she was hardly a stellar leader for her nation or for her fellow Pakistani women. I'm not putting a negative spin on Bhutto. I just refuse to get caught up in this sudden outpouring of grief for a very flawed leader who people are trying to re-make into a martyr. She wasn't. She came back to Pakistan because having political power was in her DNA - she was born of a political oligarch family. That's why she came back - it was her destiny or so she thought.
#2. To: richard9151 (#0)
#3. To: richard9151, *Iranian Conflict* (#0)
#4. To: scrapper2 (#3)
The government's finding contradicts eyewitness accounts by Bhutto's aides, who said that two bullets struck Bhutto in the head and neck before the assassin detonated himself.
#5. To: richard9151 (#4)
(Edited)
article: The government's finding contradicts eyewitness accounts by Bhutto's aides, who said that two bullets struck Bhutto in the head and neck before the assassin detonated himself.
#6. To: scrapper2 (#5)
#7. To: Ferret Mike (#6)
Her alleged 'dirtiness' no doubt was manufactured to get rid of her, I don't see any corruption charge as having standing.
#8. To: scrapper2 (#7)
(Edited)
#9. To: scrapper2 (#7)
#10. To: nobody, scrapper2 (#9)
All the lawyer jokes I hear are so nasty compared to the politician jokes.
#11. To: Ferret Mike (#6)
(Edited)
a. Her alleged 'dirtiness' no doubt was manufactured to get rid of her, I don't see any corruption charge as having standing.
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