Artikel kana sabab pamaehan Benazir...cutatan tina "daily Telegraph"
Bilawal Bhutto's limitations for Pakistan By Con Coughlin Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 04/01/2008 Have your say<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/01/04/do0402.xml#form> Read comments<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/01/04/do0402.xml#comments> A 19-year-old who has just seen his mother killed in a suicide bomb attack, a disgraced former prime minister who has been banned from holding public office for his involvement in corruption, and a dictator who has been obliged to remove his military uniform only with extreme reluctance so that he can at least give the appearance of supporting civilian rule. At first glance, Bilawal Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and Pervez Musharraf, respectively the key figures in Pakistan's delayed election process, do not inspire confidence that the faltering transition from military dictatorship to functioning democracy has the least chance of success. But Pakistan's fate rests in their hands when the country goes to the polls on February 18. Whether it survives the current crisis will depend to a large extent on how they deal with the challenges of the next few weeks. advertisement For the widespread violence that has followed Benazir Bhutto's assassination has brought into stark relief a country nudging ever closer to the abyss of all-out civil war. The fact that Miss Bhutto's enraged supporters destroyed 11 of the electoral commission's district offices was indicative of the mounting contempt they feel for the whole democratic process, which is hardly surprising given the treatment she received in Islamabad from the moment her return from exile in London was first mooted. After surviving a suicide bomb attack on her welcome-home parade, she was then placed under house arrest and banned from appearing in televised election broadcasts. When the former restriction was lifted, after protests from the American State Department and British Foreign Office, the latter obliged her to confine her campaigning to public rallies. She eventually met her death attending one such meeting at the garrison town of Rawalpindi, the headquarters of former General Musharraf's beloved army. At the time her assassins struck, Miss Bhutto was in Liaquat Park, named after Liaquat Ali Khan, the country's first post-independence prime minister who was murdered in 1951 just a few yards from where Miss Bhutto was killed. The former Rawalpindi jail, where her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in 1979, used to be nearby. Because she was the victim of a suicide bomb attack, the most likely perpetrators are Islamic extremists linked to al-Qa'eda. Indeed, an al-Qa'eda spokesman has already claimed responsibility, boasting that the terror group had "terminated the most precious American asset". But the murky relationship between Pakistan's military establishment and Islamist terror cells is well documented, and the team of Scotland Yard detectives drafted in to investigate Miss Bhutto's death faces a daunting task trying to establish the real motive for her murder. This is the third time Scotland Yard's finest have been invited to Pakistan to look into politics-related murders, and if their past experiences are anything to go by, the chances of them nailing the culprit are not promising. In 1951, having been invited to investigate Liaquat Ali Khan's murder, they were unceremoniously asked to leave the country before their inquiries were complete, and the case closed. In 1996 Inspector Knacker returned to Pakistan to consider the death of Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed in a gunfight outside his Karachi home. Miss Bhutto was prime minister at the time, but when her government was sacked for corruption, the British detectives were also sent packing without completing their inquiries. Yesterday Mr Musharraf added to the intrigue concerning her death when he told a press conference that he was not "fully satisfied" with the Pakistani investigation into her murder, and said that uncertainty remained over the exact cause of her death. The Bhutto plot thickens. But who killed Benazir is arguably of less concern for Pakistan's long-term survival than how the country ultimately comes to terms with this latest political assassination. Bilawal Bhutto, a 19-year-old Oxford undergraduate who now succeeds his murdered mother as leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), spoke of democracy being the best revenge for his mother's death. But under the Pakistani constitution, it will be another six years before he can contest an election, and in the meantime real political power within the PPP lies with his father, Asif Zardari, who has served an eight-year jail sentence for corruption. Had the elections been held next week as originally scheduled, it is likely the PPP would have benefited from a pro-Benazir sympathy vote. Instead the bitter feuding between rival camps within the 700,000-strong Bhutto tribe is, if anything, likely to damage the party's reputation by the time the February polls take place as Mumtaz Bhutto, the clan's 74-year-old leader, continues to dispute Bilawal's appointment in favour of Benazir's younger sister, Sanam. Had the PPP not been so beholden to the whim of the Bhutto tribe, then by rights the party's leadership should have gone to Aitzaz Ahsan, a popular figure in the lawyers' movement who was keen to modernise the Sindh-based party in favour of one with genuine national appeal, but being both a Punjabi and non-Bhutto, he stood no chance. By comparison, the one politician to enhance his standing in the past week is Mr Sharif, who proved himself to have the qualities of a true statesman when he put his long-standing rivalries with the Bhutto clan to one side and visited Miss Bhutto as she lay dying in hospital. It is gestures such as this that suggest Pakistan is still capable of healing the wounds of the past, and Mr Sharif's decision to contest February's election means he should now be given serious consideration as a future prime minister. When Mr Sharif originally returned from exile, Mr Musharraf made it clear the ban would remain on him returning to public life, and packed him off to Saudi Arabia. But with Miss Bhutto out of the picture and the Bhutto tribe in disarray, Mr Musharraf is rapidly running out of viable options.
