Bhutto lineage

• The naming of Bilawal, the late Benazir Bhutto’s son, as the chairman of the Pakistan

People’s Party is as much an exercise in veiled sycophancy as it is an attempt at sustaining dynastic rule in Pakistan politics. When Benazir assumed the party leadership after her father’s execution, she had by then learnt the ropes and was a suave politician. That she could command such a hysterical following even after eight years of exile was a tribute to her abilities.

Her teenage son — still a student, yet to learn the ABC of politics in Pakistan — finds himself willed as the inheritor of the Bhutto legacy by default. The current sympathy wave might help the party to sweep the ensuing polls and Bhutto junior could well be the heir apparent, but his ability to carry the nation through this tumultuous period is in grave doubt. Neither is his father, Asif Zardari, a politician of proven mettle that he can advise the son on the craft of politics or run the party de facto. A coterie of self-serving power brokers around Bilawal appears to be a sure possibility.

— Pachu Menon

Margao, Goa

• Where as she could not run her party democratically and now has named her son and husband as successors, how could anyone call Benazir Bhutto a great democrat? Her death is definitely tragic but let us not become too emotional and articulate compliments she does not deserve, given moreover that her two stints in government were mired in lengthy corruption charges.

... contd.