Benazir Bhutto - SZABIST

As she got up to leave, she stopped to chat with me again, thanking me for an article I had written on
the eve of her return to Pakistan in which I had welcomed her back. Her last words were to ask me to
see her in Karachi. This meeting did not take place, alas, as she hit the campaign trail, and I flew to
England.
While I worked as a young deputy secretary on her father’s speech-writing staff in the mid-seventies,
she was abroad, first in the US, and then in England. It was not until General Zia overthrew ZAB in
1977 that I first saw Benazir.
She was a slim, awkward-looking girl as she stood on the stage in Rawalpindi to address an opposition
rally. Her first public speech was brief and hesitant, and her Urdu was frankly terrible.
Over the years, I heard her speaking in public many times, and she improved with each outing. On her
return after years of self-exile, I noticed how much more fluent in Urdu she had become.
Many people have compared her unfavourably with her father, but I have always thought she was a
much kinder and more humane person than ZAB. Indeed, her weakness as a prime minister lay in her
inability to be tough with people when it was necessary. Margaret Thatcher, a politician Benazir
admired greatly, never had this problem.
During her second stint as prime minister, Saeed Hasan Khan, the writer and raconteur, once told me
he was sitting in the office of Tanveer Ahmed Khan, then information secretary to the government.
The green (secure) telephone rang with the PM at the other end. Saeed Bhai heard his host say that he
did not know who Mazdak was, and nor was he aware why he had started writing against her. End of
conversation.
Those were the days when I was a civil servant, and wrote under the pseudonym of Mazdak. Benazir
Bhutto was well aware of this, but never used her prerogative as prime minister to have me dismissed,
or otherwise disciplined, even when I was very critical of her government in this newspaper.
Her father would have had no compunction in having an insubordinate civil servant sacked. As a
matter of fact, he had many removed or suspended for far lesser sins.
For all these and many other reasons, I was sickened, saddened and angered at her assassination. It
seems such a waste of so much potential. For years, there has been a concerted campaign to smear her
reputation in the media and in the drawing rooms of the privileged of Pakistan. Orchestrated by
intelligence agencies, it has resonated deeply among the chattering classes. As it is politically
incorrect to openly support the army, the rich and the powerful have taken to talking down politicians
and the political process. This justifies the presence of the army, and this in turn suits those whose
only concern is the accumulation of wealth.
But talk to the dispossessed of Pakistan, and you soon discover the PPP’s true constituency. You will
also find out why, despite the army’s best efforts over the years, the Bhutto name is such a force in
Pakistani politics.
Many of her detractors among the well-to-do are of the view that Benazir was elected prime minister
twice simply because she was ZAB’s daughter. This might have been true in the initial phase of her
political career, but after the years she spent in jail and under house arrest under Zia, she had gained
an independent stature.