This article...

...sums it up pretty well, though a bit unkindly, and also not completely unbiasedly:
My heart bleeds for Pakistan. It deserves better than this grotesque feudal charade

So, according to the will of Benazir Bhutto, the leadership of her party, of which she was the life-long chairperson, has been handed over to her teenaged son by way of his father, who was the actual nominee for the party leadership by Benazir herself. The son is still in college, and hasn't been in Pakistan for most of his life, though thats another story. He will be "guided" by his father and other senior members of the party till he "comes of age". This is quite similar to stories I had read a very long time ago in which a child would be positioned on the throne, but the strings were pulled by other people.

Luckily in Pakistan we don't have kings and queens, but we do have military dictators. We also do have elections once in a while, the results of which are "engineered". What lends credence to this is that fact that after the results of the elections, the winners and losers go to the US embassy in Islamabad to meet with the US ambassador to secure his/her "job" as the head of government. I remember very well Benazir Bhutto doing exactly the same in 1988, after her party won the elections, but she couldn't form a government without a few meetings with the US ambassador in the US embassy. So much so that the ambassador at the time, whose name I have forgotten by the way, was dubbed the US Viceroy in the press, with reference to the role he was playing at the time.

However, the tradition of a political party being run by a family is not limited to Pakistan only, but is a part of the politics of this region of the world. In India, which is a real and strong democracy, the Congress party revolves around a family. The same is true in Bangladesh where the two main political figures, both women, are in politics courtesy of their fathers and husbands. Benazir's son taking over her political party does also make some sense in the ethnic dimension of Pakistani politics also, but still, I think Tariq Ali is right when he says that Pakistan deserves better than a feudal charade.

Speaking of Tariq Ali, I read his book Street Fighting Years while in school. I liked the book very much, but still remember that he did not have any good words to say about Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Benazir's father, a former prime minister of Pakistan who was hanged by a military dictator.

It is difficult...

...to play games with the truth in this age of ubiquitous mobile phones with cameras. Yesterday the TV channels were airing pictures showing a person aiming a gun at Benazir Bhutto right beside here armoured car (whose gift?) while she was waving out of the sun-roof. What was striking was the calm face and manner of the gun man. There is also a video, which clearly shows a handgun being fired 3 times, and then an explosion.
The government, however, has now changed its version to say that the explosion preceeded the firing, and Bhutto died due to her head banging against the lever of the sun roof by the force of the explosion. The government has also blamed a tribal militant for this attack, and played an intercepted recording of a conversation, purported to be of him congragulating his accomplices. Inconveniently for the government, the spokesman of the tribal militant has denied anything to do with the Bhutto assasination, saying they do not target women in line with tribal traditions, which is something many in Pakistan will readily believe.
There is immense shock in the country. And gloom. People have been affected by this killing in a way I don't remember having seen before. Images of her burial were heart-wrenching.
But nothing is simple in this part of the world. These two articles provide just a glimpse into the murky world of Pakistani politics.

My long journey with a vulnerable but brave charmer

Life and liberty

This is...

...not "doing God".
'With religion I began to make sense of the world'

An informative...

...article about Radovan Karadzic.
Twelve years on, a killer on the loose