Bhutto's surprise will offers guidance to her party
Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: December 29, 2007 03:24:23 PM
NAUDERO, Pakistan — Benazir Bhutto left a last will and testament that maps out the future for her political party and who should lead it in her absence, her husband Asif Zardari disclosed on Saturday.
The document will be presented to her Pakistan People's Party on Sunday. It's expected to include her preference for who should lead the party in her absence. Zardari himself would be a highly controversial contender. Their son Bilawal would win a huge amount of goodwill, but is still a teenager, and Zardari appeared to rule him out on Saturday.
"He's too young. He's 19 years old," Zardari said.
Zardari said he opened the letter himself only on Saturday. Its contents will be read to an emergency meeting of the party on Sunday by Bilawal, a student at Britain's prestigious Oxford University, where his mother also studied.
"She left a message for the party and she left a will," Zardari said, in between meeting mourners who came by the hundreds to Benazir Bhutto's family home here in the village of Naudero. "This [document] is about politics. What we should do and how we should go about things."
Asked whether he wanted to lead the party, he didn't dismiss it.
"Lets see.... It depends on the party and it depends on the will."
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The selection of Benazir
The selection of Benazir Bhutto's son, Bilawal, and her husband, Asif Zardari, to serve as the co-chairs of the National Peoples Party reinforces my view that the power struggles among the Pakistani elite are not about democracy or progressive change at all. These are rival factions of gangsters.
Asif Zardari, for example, reputation for corruption is so great that when his late wife was the prime minister of Pakistan he was known as "Mr. Ten Percent", which is the amount that he had to be given in order for a government contract to be approved. Bhutto herself was suspected of being corrupt too and these suspicions played a large role in her being dismissed twice as the nation's prime minister.
That poor kid. All he wanted to do is have fun in college
be a spoiled rich kid in college, and now they're putting him in a death situation. Yeah, her hubby was no prize. She had to get married; it was part of the deal. Find her an acceptable Muslim man, get married and breed - she couldn't escape that.
Bilawal is giving political
Bilawal is giving political cover to his father. Yes, Benazir Bhutto had to get married but there are a large number of educated and enlightened Pakistani men who are not gangsters. Her marriage to Asif Zardari doesn't exactly strike me as an arrangment that she entered into blindly.
I know it's cover for the father, pt, but it just put a huge
bullseye on the kid. Just keep the money you already scammed and go back to Dubai. They were already rich -Bhutto's family; among the largest landowners in Pakistan.
Read This Opinion
Novak throws some interesting information out.
Greed and the desire for
Greed and the desire for political power does strange things to people. Money is never enough for folks. They crave a certain degree of acceptance and respect that money alone does not convey. The son will put up with having a bullseye on his back if he has been persuaded that it will result in personal glory, vindication for his mother and maternal grandfather, and redemption of his father's reputation. He is ready to be a martyr, too.