The death of Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto

When Benazir Bhutto died, a lot of tears were shed. Pakistan went into lockdown. Promises of catching her killers were made. Asif Zardari went so far as to proclaim he knows who killed her. He called them the “Qatil” League; an infamous euphemism for the PML – Q which then decided it was just the PML without any alphabet attached to its end. But then, the PPP came into power and then completely forgot about capturing their slain leader’s killers. They paid $5 million to a UN commission which prepared a report and gave it to the Government of Pakistan. The PPP then decided that the report did not merit a review and therefore till date, we have not seen nor heard of the said report and what the government wants to do with it. 

This year like all previous years, the two daughters of Benazir Bhutto (Bakhtawar Zardari and Aasifa Zardari) minus their brother, the prince of Paki-land Bilawal Zardari went to the mausoleum of their dead mother and laid flower wreaths on her grave. I’ve always wondered if they only go to visit her grave on the 27^th of December. Anyway, like the last two years, we have constantly heard that the PPP government will catch the perpetrators of the terrorist attack on Benazir Bhutto and bring them to justice. Apparently the Americans did that for us last year, when Baitullah Mehsud the prime accused in Benazir Bhutto’s murder was blasted to pieces in a drone attack. Well if the prime accused is dead, then who is the government still searching for? They have Saud Aziz in FIA lockup. He was the Chief Police Officer of the Rawalpindi police at that time. I wonder what treacherous part he played in the whole operation that culminated in the death of Benazir Bhutto, if any. And then I wonder why it is such a difficult job being a bureaucrat in this country; not only can you not do your job, but when the axe falls, it will always fall on you.

Benazir Bhutto’s all over the blogosphere, the news and the TV today. Tomorrow, she will be forgotten once again for another year. And a couple of years after that, if the PPP stops being in power, people will stop remembering 27^th December as the day Benazir Bhutto died. What the PPP has actually achieved post Benazir is the renaming of every possible object under the sun in her name. But that hasn’t really helped the PPP on its way. They are a misled bunch of loafers grouped together who had a leader to follow; now they just go where the wind takes them.

But then Benazir Bhutto herself did not do the democratic thing before her death did she? Handing the PPP over to her husband on a platter is perhaps one of those undemocratic things that make dictators so enticing to the general public. All over the news today people are discussing who gained the most out of Benazir’s death. The point however is not who gained the most out of her death; the point is what next? Are we to suffer eternally at the hands of the ineptness of the PPP? First at Asif Zardari’s rag tag group of loafers and then at the hands of his son Bilawal Zardari who does not even merit to be called a citizen of this country, much less the anointed ruler? These are harsh questions, and ones that the Pakistani nation needs to answer for itself. Failing to do so might just cause our plight to continue on...forever.