Like all great political figures, Benazir Bhutto was far from perfect. In more than a decade of knowing her, as a reporter on the Pakistan beat, I often found her exasperating — as when, in the middle of an interview, she would digress from mouthing the juiciest lines about her pet hate Zia-ul-Haq and start reading off totally irrelevant figures on Pakistan’s economy. Or when she would keep you waiting for hours after fixing time for a meeting — and this could happen irrespective of whether she was in power or not.

She was also sometimes irrational, as in her May 1990 attack on India over Kashmir. She delivered the famous speech in Muzaffarabad where she exhorted Kashmiris to cut Jagmohan (then J&K Governor) into pieces: Jagmohan ko jag-jag mo-mo han-han kar do, she said, making a furious chopping gesture with her left palm on to her right hand. She could also be stupid in speaking so openly against her army to Rajiv Gandhi in what was hailed as the “honeymoon” summit in the winter of 1988. Stupid, because she had not even cared to get her own rooms swept for bugs. As you would expect, the ISI had the room nicely wired and tapes of that damning conversation were liberally leaked to justify her sacking by the Establishment — that remarkable Pakistani institution, the trinity of the army, intelligence and bureaucracy which I have always spelt with capital E. She could be corrupt, as her fortunes overseas would tell you. And, finally, she could also be desperate for power as evident in the compromises she lately made with Musharraf.

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