Murtaza Bhutto

instead of being their helpless victim as she is today. As late as the beginning
of September the political initiative was still hers to exercise. But instead of
being alive to the sensitivity of her predicament, she chose to respond to it
with what comes best to her: bluster and cleverness. In her National
Assembly exchange with Nawaz Sharif she was brilliant in scoring points and
in using sarcasm to dazzle her audience. But at the end of that long evening,
having proposed nothing substantive, all that remained was the memory of a
clever debater. If Pakistan's tragedy is that its fortunes have always been tied
to the apron strings of ineptitude and shortsightedness, Benazir's tragedy is
that for all her cleverness she has never been able to rise above the level of an
extraordinary debater. Consider in this context the performance she put up at
the condolence meeting held for her dead brother at the Prime Minister's
house. Indirectly pointing a finger at the President, she said that Murtaza's
killing and the steps being taken against her government — a less than
guarded allusion to the President's reference to the Supreme Court and his
message regarding accountability to the two houses of Parliament — seemed
to be part of a well-planned conspiracy. Grief should be turned into strength.
The Prime Minister here was trying transparently to turn grief into political
advantage. But it is a measure of the presidential assertiveness which the
nation is currently witnessing that the Presidency lost on time in issuing a
statement of which the operative part reads: "The president hopes that all
holders of public office will refrain from making statements and insinuations
that cast doubts on the integrity of important institutions in the country. The
President (further) hopes that the Prime minister will be able to handle this
very difficult time with grace and calm, especially since she is proceeding
abroad to represent Pakistan's position on important issues at world fora."
Could a sharper rap be administered on the Prime Minister's knuckles?
I am writing these lines on Saturday morning, that is before the Prime
Minister's scheduled meeting with the President later in the day. But it takes
no special gift of clairvoyance to see that the setting of this meeting will be
tense with little of that bonhomie which marked Nawaz Sharif's meeting with
the President a few days ago. Too much has happened and too wide a breach
opened between the party leader and her former lieutenant for there to be a
return to the camaraderie of old. What blinded Benazir in her response to
Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah was the dark thought that a man whom she had
favoured (Shah Sahib having been elevated above the heads of some of his
senior colleagues) was now asserting his independence. Much the same
Bhutto logic is at work in her attitude to Farooq Leghari. What should not be
forgotten is that it took a long time for the President to ready his bow and
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