Benazir Bhutto, 1953 - 2007

Killed in the safest place

If I thought the year 2007 would run out on the note of events that have already taken place with the effects of the credit crunch, the prospects of recessions and economic show-downs coupled with low consumer confidence and Madeleine McCann, I was wrong.

I had hardly had breakfast and returned to my room when I heard of a suicide bomb attack in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on the convoy of Benazir Bhutto, we were first told she was safe, that was not the case, she was mortally wounded.

Rawalpindi if you may know is the military headquarters of the Pakistan; it has the intelligence services and obviously should have the best security measures you can hope to have in such a volatile country.

The question remains how a suicide bomber first took a shot at Benazir Bhutto´s neck and possibly her chest before compounding the commotion with a self conflagration that wasted over 20 lives – in Rawalpindi.

That would be point of discussion as one hopes that all the people behind this heinous, cruel, shameful, cowardly act of gross terrorism are caught and punished.

The Pakistan of today has all the hallmarks of Pervez Musharraf´s misgovernment and pseudo-democracy that has proved more ruinous for Pakistan over the last 8 years.

But we have to pause for thought as our prayers, heartfelt sympathy and condolences are conveyed to the family of Benazir Bhutto who was assassinated this afternoon in Rawalpindi.

Pakistan looking forward

The future of Pakistan is in the balance as our overriding policy of the war on terror is condemning to the scrapheap essential matters of true democratic reform in favour of comfortable but corrupt alliances with the West.

Ms. Bhutto was a flawed personality amidst allegations of corruption and other accusations of impropriety, but in all that Pakistan has to offer of leadership, it appears she still embodied the aspirations of the masses as they flocked to her rallies in the hope that she had a message and a solution to their ills and situations.

This chapter closes with 3-days of mourning for a lady who served her country twice as Prime Minister, the ramifications however would be more far-reaching than we can begin to fathom, eventually, one would hope Pervez Musharraf would be swept away then allowing the governing institutions of Pakistan to thrive as bastions of real democracy.

Pakistanis deserve that much and like President Bush said in his statement about this killing – they should honour Benazir Bhutto memory with a return to democracy. My hope is that it would be a properly representative democracy rather than the charade that now exists.

Benazir Bhutto – leader, voice, hope and martyr – Rest in peace.

The Grand Old Duke of Pakistan

I love the English

The English can be so wicked; dressing up the most scathing criticism with the novelty of a nursery rhyme exemplifies that kind of pretend kindness that is equivalent of taking long knives in the back whilst seeing everyone smile at the event.

The debacle that Pakistan has settled into is not only puzzling but farcical; a tin-pot general who thinks his incumbency would be threatened by the judiciary imposes emergency rule and sacks the bench and puts his puppets on the bench.

Pulling all stops

He stops people from gathering to protest his megalomania as the constitution is caught between the limbo of being suspended and being the basis of the rule that is martial law in everything but name.

The election date became a moveable feast that moved from January to February and then back to January, but nobody is free to campaign for elections that would take place in less than 60 days if they do.

The khaki-thug who commands an air of grudging respectability from the West because of the perverseness of the war on terror might just find that his firstname Pervez is really a colloquial corruption of perverse as people get corralled into prison with impunity and house arrest orders get imposed and removed; the cordons and barricades swung in and out of place like a matador coaxing a bull – and I am in Spain – Pakistan might well run out of prison space as the brigands in police uniform mob the public with sticks and staves and slaps.

Drunk with intoxicating power

When he said imposing this rule which seems to have no focus apart from whims that seem to chart the course of a completely inebriated man on his way home in the witching hour was the hardest thing he had ever done – one can see how power-drunkenness that lead one to do foolish things.

However, enough of this and let us see how history would remember the Grand Old Duke of Pakistan and notice that history just has a way of repeating itself location not withstand – the similarities are left for you to note.

The nursery rhyme

O! The Grand old Duke of York

He had ten thousand men

He marched them up to the top of the hill

And marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up

And when they were down, they were down

And when they were only halfway up

They were neither up nor down.

This is as I remember it, we marched, stood up and sat down to the events depicted in the nursery rhyme none the wiser about the fact that we were making fun of an army general.

I would not pen the Pakistani version, there are literary proponents ad poets in that country better talented to give us a nursery rhyme that depicts the events in Pakistan today for posterity.

General Pervez Musharraf would be remembered well maybe not the way he would want to be remembered but that shows how much control we have of the present and none particularly of the future and history.

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Pakistan’s Political Crisis