Adil Najam
Benazir Bhutto was assassinated one year ago today, December 27.
I remember being in utter shock when I first heard that news. In some ways I am still in shock. Indeed, as our wall of newspaper covers showed, the whole world was in shock. That shock, I believe, is also still alive.
And, yet, so much – so very much – has changed. An elected government holds power. Benazir Bhutto’s arch-nemesis Gen. Pervez Musharraf is no longer President of Pakistan. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, is. We still do not know who was behind her death, but speculation remains rife. The economy remains in nosedive. An energy crisis is upon us. One Chief Justice still awaits reinstatement. Another is embroiled in scandal. War talk with India on the East is the rage. Drones pound us on the West. And Pakistan continues to lose both territory and citizens to the extremists who continue to wage a war within Pakistan and on Pakistan. Most of all, anger and angst still define the social disposition.
None of this is new. As a re-reading of our review of 2007 would show there is no evidence that 2008 was any more depressing than 2007 was. It just feels that way. Good things have happened (including elections) but so many bad things have piled on that it becomes difficult to remember what they were. Each new day brings new headlines of death, depression and despondency. And each headline chips away at the national psyche. The angst compounds within us. Gloom adds to gloom and the emergent analysis becomes ever more gloomy.
Speculative it surely is, but even if only for speculation’s sake, what if she had not been killed on that fateful day a year ago?
What if she had survived the attack? Would things have been different? Would the nature of the government she would have formed or run have been different from Mr. Zardari’s government? Would Gen. Musharraf’s fate have been different? Would Justice Iftikhar’s fate have been different? Would the pressure on Pakistan from abroad have been different? Would Pakistan’s response to extremists have been different? All of this, of course, assumes that she would have won the elections and assumed power had she lived. But, would even that have been so?
I do not know the answers to any of these. No one does. But a part of me would like to believe (for the sake of my own sanity) that things in Pakistan would, indeed, have been different – and better – if she had not been killed, even if nothing else had been any different from what it is today. Simply, because the blot of her assassination would have been one less stain for our collective soul to cleanse off. And she would still be there to give hope to at least a few!
The biggest difference is that we would not have Mr. Zardari to deal with and she would have kept the party and the country together. Best analysis is below from The News.
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ZARDARI GIVEN ENOUGH ROPE TO HANG HIMSELF
By Shaheen Sehbai
WASHINGTON: The one question that I am repeatedly asked by everyone, believing that I have been quite close to Asif Ali Zardari during his days of self-exile and forced expulsion from politics for many years, is how long he and his government will survive.
It is hard to answer this very loaded and complex question almost on a daily basis, especially when people think everyone who comes to Washington from Pakistan knows something more than they do. So I have decided to pen down my answer.
My considered opinion is that the present Zardari-led set-up will not last long as it has been structured on a wrong and distorted political premise as result of which the key players who have emerged as main power wielders were never in the picture, neither of Benazir Bhutto
Things would have been quite different. I think the extremists would probably have been more determined to attack Pakistan if a woman had been in charge; they never seemed to like that idea.
But why single out the uneducated extremists, when our highly ‘educated’ elite holds only a slightly different opinion. They will always come up with the same shameful, pathetic excuse, that she stole money from Pakistan. But they never care to consider why someone whose sole intention is to commit financial fraud would repeatedly endanger her life by taking on military dictators and religious zealots.
Our elites have always been on the side of ‘feminists’ and supportive of ‘democracy,’ yet time and again they register their vote in favor of the opposing forces.
Was Benazir a great leader? I’m not sure; even historians will have a hard time on that analysis. However, she and her father showed genuine character during their times of adversity; just compare that with Nawaz who ran to his benefactors at the first opportunity, and Musharraf, Zia, and Ayub, who left in utter disgrace.
I hope the PPP survives the leadership crisis that it is facing right now. Pakistan needs a truly national political party that is not just ruled by the Chaudries of Punjab, the Sardars of Balochistan, or the thugs of Karachi.
I think things WOULD have been quite different.
First, people would have given her more of a chance because her reputation was not like Mr. Zardaris.
Second, I think she would have taken the Democracy pact with Nawaz Sharif more seriously.
Third, she would have held the PPP together better.
Fourth, she would have surrounded herself with better people than Zardari has (not people like Rahman Malik or Husain Haqqani or Salman Taseer).
But many of the bigger issues like the economy and terrorism would have still been there because they were before her as you say and they would have still been the big story that no one person could content with.
From the comment above, I assume that the commenter misspelled his/her name – an extra ‘z’ in the beginning and a missing ‘l’ at the end.
“Dushman marrey tay khushi na karee-aye, sajnaan vi marr jaana.”
I do not like Mr. Zardari at all and I think he is bad for Pakistan and bad for PPP but Benazir’s legacy and sacrifice cannot be ignored. My eyes fill up again just thinking of the price she paid with her life.
What” ifs” will not help us determine what would have been for Pakistan. You and I, we both know that things would have not been any different…That she was part of the same corrupt party and system and in a way by her silence, she would also have been party to all the injustices. You and I, we both know that in 1988 and then in 1993, she was incapable of serving our nation. By all her training and her postulations, she had not been able to take us where we as a great nation should have been able to go; she was a great orator but not a great leader. Please do not think that I am here to speak bad about someone who is not with us anymore. But I am objective and I come from a family who has worked directly with her family. I am a feminist and believe in the female power but I had to be really blind and deaf to follow her or her doctrine in any way.
Now, we have her husband ” Mr. 200 %” for a president. He is really milking a dead cow and really doing a good job at it. Other than that, he is totally incapable of understanding our
problems and our aspirations as a nation. If we have to mourn, we should mourn Fatima Jinnah, or other great female leaders. I would not mourn her as a leader but as a muslim, I would pray for her salvation for the hereafter.