Benazir Bhutto - SZABIST

Pakistan’s politics in the coming weeks and months will be shaped by opposite trends of reconciliation
and confrontation.
Reconciliation is more likely among the opposition forces with a focus on the Charter of Democracy
that Benazir Bhutto fashioned with Nawaz Sharif last year in their collective effort to reclaim the
country from Musharraf’s arbitrary rule.
The signs are encouraging with Sharif and other opposition parties showing genuine solidarity with
Bhutto’s party. We are unlikely to see that sort of rapprochement between the opposition parties and
Musharraf’s camp, for the latter must account for how this tragedy happened under their rule.
There are, meanwhile, ominous signs of confrontation with the Musharraf regime, with tens of
thousands of angry people in every corner of the country protesting the assassination of Pakistan’s
only modern political figure. The only way out is holding credible free and fair elections and
honouring the mandate of the people of Pakistan. Otherwise, the country might have to brace for
greater unrest, violence and uncertainty, with fading hope in the ability of the current regime to return
itself or the country back to normalcy.
We have lost much with the passing of Benazir Bhutto. A big part of us all is gone for ever, and has
left a great void in our national life.
The author is a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences
Elegy written in a country graveyard
Do not go gentle into that good night…
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
(Dylan Thomas)
Daily Times
January 1, 2008
Javed Hasan Aly
AND she did not go gentle into that good night. She raged against oppression, against exploitation,
against denial and disempowerment. The metaphor was populist, the atmosphere euphoric — right
until she succumbed to her silencers. That was Benazir Bhutto.
She was an astute politician, with many dimensions and great public charm. She may have had her
failings and indulgences but for someone, like me, having no personal relationship, she now seemed to
have matured in her perceptions of public duty. Her exuding intelligence, her capacity to comprehend
and analyse, endeared her to the non-governmental intelligentsia all over the world, but may have
made her that less trustworthy in the eyes of the lesser intellects running the establishments.
Her courage is borne out by her death, needing no medallions of acknowledgment. And, therefore, she
is grieved by so many — family, friends, party loyalists and people at large. Her friends are wailing
and her enemies are stunned. The reality will dawn upon them all, sooner than later, and hopefully
their reactions will be mellowed by maturity, and emotion will have a tinge of rationality.