Last weekend was turmoil time in Pakistan. Their god-foresaken dictator declared an emergency, tossed out the government and flushed the judiciary down the drain. All in the name of fighting terrorism.
If Pakistan was a product to be sold, any PR company would be licking their fingers. They just cant seem to stop generating enough of this kind of bullshit. Surprisingly all this happens just when you expect a glimmer of democracy returning to the country after nearly a decade of dictatorship. In allowing Benazir to return to Pakistan, there was hope that the next election would be democratic with some real political parties fighting it out. However that seems to not be the case.
I personally feel that Musharraf played a masterstroke by getting Benazir in the country and then declaring martial law. He now can clamp down on her movement and speech in ways that he could never before because she was safe in London. And yes, Benazir. She has been an equal enigma in the drama called Pakistan.
I remember the time she initially came to power in the 90’s. She sounded smart, looked beautiful and was a breath of fresh air at a time when people associated Pakistan with a series of dictators and military generals that had rules it in the 80’s. However that honeymoon was shortlived for all the wrong reasons.
As they say “absolute power corrupts absolutely” and Benazir was the perfect example of that. Her husband made sure that he would amass enough of a fortune to last seven generations. Alas on the way they lost control and went downstream. And of course provided the catalyst for the Dictator Musharraf to topple governments and take over.
Jemima Khan, the estranged wife of Imran Khan writes a stinging editorial in the Telegraph.
She’s back. Hurrah! She’s a woman. She’s brave. She’s a moderate. She speaks good English. She’s Oxford-educated, no less. And she’s not bad looking either.
I admit I’m biased. I don’t like Benazir Bhutto. She called me names during her election campaign in 1996 and it left a bitter taste. Petty personal grievances aside, I still find jubilant reports of her return to Pakistan depressing. Let’s be clear about this before she’s turned into a martyr.
This is no Aung San Suu Kyi, despite her repeated insistence that she’s “fighting for democracy”, or even more incredibly, “fighting for Pakistan’s poor”.
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This is the woman who was twice dismissed on corruption charges. She went into self-imposed exile while investigations continued into millions she had allegedly stashed away into Swiss bank accounts ($1.5 billion by the reckoning of Musharraf’s own “National Accountability Bureau”).
If women around the world want one poster child, it sure is not Benazir.
Technorati tags: Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan, Jemima Khan, Musharraf, Imran Khan, Kleptocrat
