Fatima Bhutto Gets Her Snark On

By Steve Hynd

Yesterday, just as President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan was arriving in the UK to talk to the influential Pakistani ex-pat community, Fatima Bhutto took to the pages of the London Standard to explain why her uncle couldn't be trusted.

President Zardari is considered one of Pakistan's most venal figures. His nicknames run from Mr Ten Per Cent to the updated Mr Hundred and Ten Per Cent. Zardari has come under massive criticism for choosing to traipse across Europe via his usual five-star hotels while floods in northern Pakistan have killed upwards of 1,400 people, displaced 100,000 households and affected three million Pakistanis.

Zardari's alleged corruption � in the $2-3?billion range, according to The New York Times � has not stopped Cameron or Obama's governments from funding, supporting and propping up the government of a man whose legacy has been marked by political unpopularity, instability, large-scale graft and violence. The Pakistan People's Party that Zardari took over after the murder of his wife Benazir Bhutto (my aunt) is referred to as the Permanent Plunder Party.

Zardari does not have the will or the understanding to cope with Pakistan's escalating volatility. Just last year he said that his government was hard at work fighting �extremists from Aung San Suu Kyi to the Taliban�, mistaking the Burmese democracy campaigner for a terror outfit. How does Britain expect Zardari to fight terror when he's not even sure of what the word means?

The longer Zardari and his coterie are funded in the billions and welcomed by democratic governments, the longer Pakistan will remain hostage to obtuse political posturing, corruption and violent instability. Pakistan and the world cannot afford much more of the Zardaris in power.

When Bhutto talks about "the Zardaris" she's probably referring to her cousin, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who has now completed his studies at Oxford and is being presented to the world by his father as the natural successor:

The gathering of Mr Zardari's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) in Hall 3 of Birmingham's International Convention Centre is widely billed as the formal launch of Bilawal's political career following his graduation from Oxford with a freshly-minted 2:1 degree.

It is a career which senior PPP figures have publicly stated they want to see culminating in the young man becoming his embattled country's prime minister, a post held twice by his mother to both the acclaim and disgust of her fellow Pakistanis.

Embroiled in long-standing corruption allegations which earned him the nickname "Mr Ten Per Cent" and unease over his strategy in dealing with terrorism, Mr Zardari is badly in need of a boost to his support among influential British Pakistanis and is expected to announce that he is handing sole control of the PPP to his son. As one source put it: "What better way of dealing with the critics than unveiling an unblemished replacement?"

...It is understood that Bilawal, who cannot become an MP in Pakistan until he is 25, will now spend his time between Dubai, where he spent much of his childhood while his father was in prison on corruption charges, and Pakistan, as he begins an ascent to power.

What the Independent calls "dynastic democracy" is an oxymoron whether it's the Zardaris, the Bushes or the Clintons practising it. All it does is entrench power in a rich elite - the very antithesis of democracy. And with a figurehead so young and inexperienced, who could expect that he'll be more than a puppet for those rich, powerful interests that have already made such a mess of Pakistan.

Fatima Bhutto's op-ed is snarky, to say the least, but it's very difficult to say she is wrong or to say that the US and the West are doing the right thing by hitching their own long-term interests to those of that elite.

Update: As the political fallout from what is openly being called Zardari's Katrina continues, Bilalwal at least seems to be in damage limitation mode:

�It has been stated that I am going to launch my political career this Saturday in Birmingham. This is not true. In fact, I will not even be attending the event and instead I will be opening a donation point at the Pakistani High Commission in London for victims of the terrible floods which have ravaged northern Pakistan."

Either that or he just decided he's going to cut the strings. Here's hoping it's the latter, which would be best for the young man and for Pakistan, even as my natural cynicism tells me it's the former.

And Fatima has another op-ed pulling no punches:

Zardari takes a lot of overseas trips -- so many that one local TV pundit estimated somewhat anecdotally last year that Richard Holbrooke, U.S. President Barack Obama's special envoy to the "AfPak" region, had spent more time in Pakistan than Zardari had recently. But the timing of this particular visit has angered not only his subjects but also his hosts. Two prominent Asian Britons refused to meet the visiting head of state. Khalid Mahmood, a member of parliament, vigorously condemned Zardari's decision to visit London. "A lot of people are dying," he told the press. "He should be [in Pakistan] to try to support the people, not swanning around in the UK and France." Lord Ahmed, a labor MP, continued that Zardari had a responsibility to be "looking after people, not [be] over here."

Yet the protests seem to have fallen on deaf ears -- which really shouldn't surprise anyone who has watched the Zardari government in action. The floods are just the latest, most tragic example of how inept the Pakistani state truly is. The inundation was predictable; Pakistan suffers monsoon rains every year at exactly the same time. But in a country -- and with a president -- so endemically corrupt,  dealing with the entirely preventable, whether terrorism or natural disasters, has become impossible. There is simply no will, and more importantly no money, to spend on the Pakistani people. The country's coffers are constantly being diverted to more pressing programs -- or pockets, for that matter.

...Pakistan's The News newspaper summed up popular sentiment in a laundry list of questions posed to the country's High Commission in London. "Who is paying for the buses and coaches being booked to bring people to the Birmingham rally?" the paper asks. "Why will the president not cancel his visit?" And the most crucial question: Shouldn't the money for the trip be better spent on the flood victims? In response, the Pakistani High Commission issued a one-line blanket response:  "This is an official visit and procedures for official visits are being followed."

Pakistan can ill afford a president who prioritizes his personal political future over the lives of millions of his citizens. We have always known in Pakistan that the rest of the world's attention comes at a tremendously high cost. Yet we seem to keep paying.