Source: Globe and Mail

By SAEED SHAH

Mirpur Bhutto, Pakistan — The head of the Bhutto tribe, a founding member of the Pakistan Peoples Party, has rejected the appointment of Benazir Bhutto’s husband and son to lead the group and predicted that it will split the party.

Mumtaz Bhutto’s comments threaten to reopen the deep fissures in the family, Pakistan’s foremost political dynasty. The Bhuttos started to fall out after the 1979 execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the nation’s first elected prime minister who turned the Peoples Party into its most potent political force.

In an interview Tuesday, Mumtaz, first cousin of Benazir’s father, Zulfikar, and a former senior official in the PPP, said that the leadership of the party should have gone to a “real” Bhutto.

Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir’s widower, was unrelated to the Bhuttos, while his son, Bilawal, carried the name Zardari until his mother was assassinated last week, when he took on Bhutto as his middle name.

“The party has come into existence on the name and the sweat and the blood of the Bhutto family,” said Mumtaz, 74, a long-time critic of Benazir who lives on a grand country estate in Mirpur Bhutto, the original family village in Sindh province. “Therefore, the leadership should either have gone to Sanam or Murtaza’s son or daughter.”

A spokesman for PPP, however, dismissed Mumtaz’s comments as sour grapes. “Whatever Mumtaz Bhutto is saying, he is saying out of spite for Benazir Bhutto, spite and frustration, because he is now out in the political wilderness,” Farhatullah Babar said.

Sanam, Benazir’s sister, has never taken any active part in politics. Murtaza, Benazir’s brother, saw himself as Zulfikar Ali’s true political heir. He was gunned down in Karachi by police in 1996, leaving a daughter, Fatima, 25, and son, Zulfikar Ali Jr., 18.

After Benazir took over the leadership of the party in 1984, she fired Mumtaz over a policy disagreement. Fatima and her stepmother, Ghinwa, have publicly accused Benazir and Mr. Zardari of complicity in Murtaza’s death, which remains unsolved. Benazir was prime minister at the time. She had retorted that Murtaza was killed by people who wanted to “frame” her for it. Sanam always sided with Benazir and it is believed that her relations with Murtaza’s children remain tense, even after Benazir’s death.

“The Zardaris have made no sacrifices for the party, whereas the [Bhutto] family have made big sacrifices.” Mumtaz said. “The Zardaris have just profited from it.”

As Bilawal is just 19 and will continue his studies at Oxford University, the announcement on Sunday that father and son will co-chair the party means that Mr. Zardari – who was jailed for seven years on charges of corruption and murder that were never proven – will actually head the party for now.

“This will split the party very badly,” Mumtaz said. “He [Zardari] has no political background or acumen. I think this will lead to breakup. Total disintegration.”

Head of the 700,000-strong Bhutto tribe, Mumtaz served as the chief minister of Sindh province in Zulfikar Ali’s government in the 1970s.

A meeting of the Peoples Party executive accepted the succession plan, apparently contained in a will left by Benazir that has not been made public. Sanam also endorsed it. “I believe that the resolution of the issue of leadership in accordance with the Mohtarma’s [Benazir’s] will has not only saved the party from a crisis of leadership but will also strengthen it further,” she said in a statement.

Fatima, a Columbia University graduate who was tipped as a future challenger for leadership of the Peoples Party even when Benazir was alive, has so far not made a claim for her grandfather’s legacy but, in a local newspaper article acknowledged she had never reconciled with Benazir.

“I never agreed with her [Benazir’s] politics. I never did. I never agreed with those she kept around her, the political opportunists, hangers-on, them. They repulse me. I never agreed with her version of events. Never. But in death, in death perhaps there is a moment to call for calm,” Fatima wrote.

While Asif Zardari was not popular within the Peoples Party during his wife’s two periods as prime minister, Benazir’s death and the fact that he was imprisoned has won him support.

Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a political professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, said that workers and leaders of the Peoples Party would not want to quit the party now, just as a groundswell of sympathy looks set to sweep it to power.

“Whether the party will stay together in more difficult times, I’m not sure about that,” Prof. Rais said.

Special to The Globe and Mail

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Tags: Benazir Bhutto, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, PPP, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto