October 30,
2015
By Saeed
Qureshi
It looks improbable for the juvenile Bilawal
Bhutto Zardari (now 27) to revive and resuscitate the moribund, discredited and
hugely mauled Pakistan People’s Party of which he is the current chairman. His
father Asif Ali Zardari is the co-chairperson of the party.
Bilawal Zardari Bhutto took the reins of the
PPP on December 30, 2007. Someone earnestly apprise me of his meager part in
bolstering the distorted and blemished image of Pakistan People Party. Also
please do me a favor of pointing out his initiatives and vision, his goals and
policies to rediscover Pakistan and infuse new spirit into party’s rustic rank
and file.
Not to
speak of restructuring his defamed and declining party and unleashing a
visionary manifesto for the uplift of Pakistan, he seems to be totally
oblivious of the ground realities and lacks even basic awareness of the
national issues. His demeanor is docile. His public utterances are incoherent, interspersed
with odd and occasional uncalled for outbursts. In short he doesn’t have the
basic ingredients` of a political leader.
If the Pakistan People’s party is the party of
masses and the People then it should discard the tradition of having dynastic chairman
or the president from the Bhutto family. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto the founder of the
party could remain the boss of the PPP as long as he wanted to be. His
succession by his wife and later by his daughter Benazir Bhutto was done in
affection and as a token of alliance with the Bhutto family. But to keep the
presidency of the party within Bhutto clan is outright negation of the
manifesto and ideology for which this party was founded.
Through a political process and with a shady
profile Asif Ali Zardari could have never become the chairman of PPP. Benazir
Bhutto the daughter of illustrious Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and a political stalwart
was assassinated in Rawalpindi on 27 December 2007 in mysterious circumstances.
According to her dubious Will (whose only page has been made public), Zardari
assumed the co-chairmanship of PPP on 30 December 2007 with Bilawal Bhutto as
the chairman. Later he also ascended to the highest office of the president of
Pakistan. Mr. Zardari played his cards smartly well both as the de-facto head
or chairperson of the PPP (December 2007 to the present) as well as the
president of Pakistan (2008-2013).
Asif Ali Zardari carries around his neck the
lasting millstone of incomparable corruption and indelible obsessive lust for
making and hoarding money through every foul and sleazy mean. As a matter of
fact Zardari is not from the bloodline of Bhutto family. Due to peculiar
circumstances resulting from the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, his rise to
the political pinnacle of Pakistan and assumption of the party’s leadership was
rather ignored.
While purposely abdicating the party
leadership, Zardari donned it on the head of a young boy who lacked maturity
and experience which comes over a period of time and by going through the
grueling political process. By keeping Bilawal on the front, Zardari has been
busy in massing wealth all these years.
The bare fact is that Bilawal Bhutto doesn’t
have the grit, the making, style or the demeanor to serve as a political
leader. We have seen that he spent the period of his adolescence for pretty
long time in London and Dubai (April 1999-December-2011 with short visits to
Pakistan in between)) studying and having a glamorous and flamboyant life at
the same time. The startling details of his fun-laden lifestyle abroad are
available on social media and in certain books.
He made a major
public speech on 27 December 2012 on the
fifth death anniversary of his late mother, Benazir Bhutto. Yet his
political career actually started on 18 October 2014 by addressing a mass rally
in Karachi. Thereafter he seems to have gone in hibernation.
Bilawal looks more like the type of a young
darling lad of his party and precious scion of Bhutto clan. Yet it would be erroneous to claim that he
can provide a dynamic, revolutionary, rejuvenating and sterling leadership to
PPP. Why not seasoned people like
Khurshid Shah and Amin Fahim, Mian Raza Rabbani and similar other senior party
leaders are given the reins of this powerful political party of yester
years.
These guys have gone through the political
mill, spent their entire lives in serving the party and have suffered
enormously on that count. Their loyalty to the party is unswerving and
uncompromising. They might go ahead in improving partially or wholly the
sullied image of PPP and bring it back to its pristine glory and revolutionary
track, infuse a new spirit in order to serve the people with a renewed dynamism
and dedication.
In the hindsight, I remember the tumultuous period
following the signing of the Tashkent Peace agreement after the 1965 war between
India and Pakistan: the two neighboring yet perennially hostile countries. Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto the young and robust foreign minister of president Ayub Khan parted
company with him to launch a political movement under the banner of Pakistan
People’s Party. He accused president Ayub of conceding Pakistan’s national interests in the Tashkent Declaration signed on 10 January 1966.
Bhutto’s oratorical skills and promise for a new
people’s Pakistan carried through a nationwide movement resulted in the ouster
of Ayub Khan in March 1969 and
replacement by a morally degenerate Army chief general Yahya Khan as the president
of Pakistan.
Following the cessation of East Pakistan in
1971, General Yahya Khan transferred Power to ZAB on 20 December 1971 because
of electoral victory of his party in 1970 general elections in West Pakistan
which was now the left over Pakistan. It took six years (1965-1971) for Bhutto
to become the president of Pakistan.
Notwithstanding Bhutto’s insatiable lust for
power and his role in the separation of East Pakistan and Pakistan army’s disastrous
deployment in the former East Pakistan and India military intervention, the
fact remains that Bhutto had the inimitable talent of a great leader as an
orator, a political maverick and an astute strategist.
His achievements after
assuming power are varied and monumental. One of such achievements was to
restore the battered confidence of the people of Pakistan after the cessation
of East Pakistan and Pakistan army’s surrender to the Indian army.
Now compare ZAB with the incumbent chairman of
the PPP Bilawal Zardari Bhutto and also with the co-chairperson of the PPP Asif
Ali Zardari. One tends to acknowledge that while ZAB founded and harnessed the
PPP into a formidable political force that knocked down a powerful military
ruler of Pakistan; his successors have debased this party with stigma of
corruption, misuse of power, money grabbing and a host of serious crimes.
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