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'Pakistan would have  been different if Bhutto was allowed to continue' says Bilawal Bhutto Zardari

Trans Asia news, April 2015

Excerpt:

‘When I try to think of my first recollection of  my grandfather’s existence, I realise that I can’t,’ said Bilawal Bhutto Zardari at a ‘Memorial’ event in London, commemorating thirty-six years since former Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was executed on 4 April 1979. ‘I never had the privilege of meeting him, I never experienced the joy of being held by him or of holding his hand, but I have grown up with his constant presence around me - I knew the story of his life without ever having been told it and I have shared the privilege of studying at Christ Church, Oxford where he also studied  – that period of his education which he described as having given him his “western mind” while retaining his  “eastern soul.”

Listening to twenty-six year-old Bilawal speak was also poignant for me. Thirty-six years ago on 4 April I was in Islamabad, Pakistan. I  remember the day like yesterday when I heard the news that Bhutto had been hanged by the military regime of General Zia-ul Haq.  I was  not a dispassionate bystander.  I was a friend of Bhutto’s elder daughter, Benazir.  We had both been undergraduates at Oxford University and in May 1978 I had arrived  in Pakistan to give her some moral support.   My role  was to sit in the Supreme Court of Pakistan in Rawalpindi where her father’s appeal against the death sentence was being heard.

Charged with conspiracy to murder a political opponent (the opponent survived but his father died),  on 18 March 1978 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had been sentenced to death by the Lahore High Court. Although he had been named the ‘principal accused’ , with four other ‘confessing co-accused’, the only person who connected him with the ‘murder’ had turned State’s Evidence – his testimony asserting that the then Prime Minister had told him ‘on the telephone’  to take out a political opponent.

As the appeal wound inexorably towards its conclusion, the evidence against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto seemed so circumstantial that, with my British perspective on the law, it seemed impossible to think that the death sentence could be carried out. When the judgment of the seven judges, who had sat on the bench, was announced in February 1979, four had voted in favour of dismissing the appeal,   three against. Yet again with a split verdict, I asked myself, how could they go ahead with the death sentence?  In the uncertain weeks which followed countless mercy petitions flooded in from all corners of the world. But to no avail. In the early hours of 4 April 1979, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was taken from his cell in Rawalpindi Central Jail and, as his political supporters said, ‘judicially murdered’. In the first interview she gave after his death, with tears in her eyes, Benazir   described how during her last meeting with her father ‘they wouldn’t even open the cell doors for me to kiss him goodbye.’

Twenty-eight years later, having assumed his political mantle, being twice elected Prime Minister, Benazir was assassinated: another tragedy, another story which explained why, on this thirty-sixth anniversary of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s death, I found myself listening to Benazir’s son,  Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, speaking about the grandfather he had never met.

The importance of the event, he said, was not just to look back but also to look forward  ‘to focus on some of the things that I have learnt about him which I believe are as relevant today in Pakistan as they were then. His vision, his dream to make Pakistan a better place  not just for the wealthy few but for the millions. To appreciate his life, we also have to cast our minds back to how Pakistan was in the 1970s. Pakistan was still a young country - independent for barely 20 years - it had just lost its eastern wing, which had become the independent country of Bangladesh – it had just fought and lost a war with India. But instead of allowing Pakistanis to give up hope my grandfather revitalised the country.  He negotiated a peace with India  brought back 90,000 prisoners of war  and regained 5,000 square miles of territory which had been lost. He restored a faltering country’s pride and set Pakistan on the path to democracy.’

As I had also learnt during my long association with Pakistan, one of the achievements of the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto administration was to introduce a Constitution in 1973 which was unanimously agreed by all four provinces.  As his grandson emphasized:  ‘In a country with different linguistic and ethnic origins this achievement cannot be underestimated. It remains the bedrock of our constitutional stability. He took politics out of the drawing room – to the man on the street - into the villages, towns and cities across the country.  That was the message of the foundation of the Pakistan Peoples Party in 1967. Under his leadership he formed the PPP into a truly national party so that the common man and woman really did feel they had a stake in their country.’  

Moving to talk about Islam, Bilawal demonstrated that examining the relationship between Christianity and Islam is nothing new by citing a paper written by his grandfather as a student in 1948.   ‘ Many westerners believe that Islam was a danger to Christianity, but this notion is unfounded. At the peak of Islam’s strength, the Christians were treated kindly everywhere and given full liberty to worship according to their ways.  The Prophet (PBUH) had frequently stated that the lives, properties and laws of the Christians and Jews were under the protection of God and he said, “If anyone infringes their rights I myself will be his enemy and, in the presence of God, I will bring a charge against him”.’

Bilawal’s theme was evident: if his grandfather had been permitted to continue his work instead of being summarily removed from power ‘who knows how different the situation in the world might look today?’ In many respects he is right. Pakistan is a very different country today from the one I first visited in 1978 before  General Zia’s policy of ‘Islamisation’ took effect. Since then – with intermittent breaks - the narrative of Pakistan has been the one encapsulated by the religious fanaticism which Zia initiated, when people were flogged and hanged in public, and when, as Bilawal reminded us,  women’s rights were actually taken away. The challenge today for Pakistan is to recapture the narrative of the ‘new Pakistan’ of the Bhutto era  ‘so that,’ as his grandson said,  ‘Pakistan has the opportunity of becoming a peaceful, prosperous and progressive state.’

‘It is incumbent on us to reclaim the ideological ground and cultural space ceded to the extremists,’ he concluded.  ‘Pakistan’s original identity is as a people of the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent, the descendants of the noble Indus civilisation, and the followers of a Sufi tradition who were tolerant of religious diversity and imbued with a love for humanity. To create a Pakistan which is a pluralistic society – united yet diverse  – where people can work and live and travel freely, with dignity and respect we need to confront the challenges – the polarisation  - the terrorism – the growing population – the water shortages – and the economic hardships  which millions face.’

 ‘It is a long haul’ Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had said of the challenges in the 1970s ‘but we have braced ourselves for it.’  Two generations later, it is still a long haul.

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