The Bhutto family’s blind rush towards collective suicide amazes everyone. The opposition can’t believe its good fortune. It has found an ally in the unlikeliest of places. The fortress that had once seemed impregnable has suddenly begun to be rifled from within. The Pakistan Peoples Party’s friends, for their part, are devastated. Torn between the two Bhutto ladies, they do not know whom to blame. The cheer has turn to despair at the very start of Ms Bhutto’s current tenure. And this, not because of sinister conspiracies from outside but from puerility within.
There is little to be said for the mother and son. For all their past contribution to the cause, they have wobbled at the first test on home ground. They have shown an inability to rise above their sense of temporary, if genuine, wrong. They haven’t been more bitter against their worst enemies. In fact they find Zia benign by comparison. What he wouldn’t have given to hear that praise.
But the hardest to unravel are the knots the Prime Minister seems to be tied up in. Back at election time, there was a feeling across the board that Begum Bhutto’s indiscretion was harming the PPP, especially in the Punjab. Mir Murtaza’s clumsy attempt to jump into the fray was inept on many counts. This was certified by the election results wherein Murtaza made a poor showing. Benazir Bhutto, therefore, appeared to be suffering silently at the hands of her unreasonable relatives and in that, she had the sympathy of friend and foe alike. The Murtaza factor had all but fizzled out.
It was then that the PPP’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) ousted Begum Bhutto from her party post. It was feared that the lady, desperate for her son’s rehabilitation, was going to annoint him her successor. Had she done so, the pliant CEC could then have unseated the usurper. This would have been in the fullness of time. Greater sympathy would have accrued to the PM. Politically, it would have been a master-stroke. The mother and son would have been seen to have made their own mistakes. And if, as Begum Bhutto has said, she was not going to impose Murtaza on the party, the extreme step of her ouster was unecessary. Playing down the issue, the PM told the press that she had merely regularised the de facto position. If that were so, what need was there to do it? In any event, Ms Bhutto was unable to choke the challenge with a pre-emptive strike at the chairpersonship.
And once the arrow had left the bow, the PM was left with few options. Still, might it not have been possible to work out separate times to visit the elder Bhutto’s shrine on his birthday? There was an inevitability about what followed. Mir Murtaza was spoiling for a fight and he got what he wanted. He has shown that provoked he can still be as militantly irreconcilable as ever.
The dissidents and disaffected members of the old PPP couldn’t have been better served. Wanting to tame them, Ms Bhutto has handed them a measure of political legitimacy and popular sympathy that was otherwise beyond their reach. And, wanting to keep her hand free for the main opposition, she has provided the latter new grist to its tired mills.
The need for the PM now is to try and control the damage, even if that requires some temporary loss of face. For a start, she is doing well by not commenting on the issue. Lesser mortals in the party too, should learn to keep their own counsel. It is a family matter, that is where it ought to have stayed and to which it now needs to revert. Ms Bhutto has many concerned relatives. She should let them mediate the problem between herself and her mother.
Within the party hierarchy too, any division that a restored Begum Bhutto can cause will not prove irreparably disruptive. Realism and political sense produce compulsions of their own. Ms Bhutto’s concern should be to try and perform well as prime minister. If she can do that, Murtaza Bhutto will take a lot of learning and unlearning before he can begin to be a political match to her.
One thing looks certain meanwhile. The PMs combative brother isn’t bothered about the brink ahead. He almost seems keen on it, if only for the joy of seeing his sister over it. It is Benazir Bhutto who has to do the constructive thinking. She should begin now.