| After The Blast: 10 Questions For Benazir Bhutto |
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Benazir Bhutto’s husband Asif Zardari accuses our intelligence agencies from his home in Dubai of orchestrating the attack on his wife, while Mrs. Bhutto, sitting in Karachi, pointedly refuses to blame the spooks even when reporters mention her husband’s statement.
This contradiction is just one of several questions that ordinary Pakistanis need to ask Mrs. Bhutto after the nation’s worst political violence in our modern history.
Far from the argument of her supporters that Mrs. Bhutto’s return to Pakistan will help ease political tensions, her first day on our soil has confirmed fears she is very much part of political friction. Her recent brand of politics has further divided Pakistanis instead of uniting them.
In the interest of removing misunderstandings, the following ten questions must be posed to the leader of Pakistan Peoples Party:
1. Why didn’t you ask your supporters to avoid a mass rally when even your own friends in the Pakistani and foreign governments warned you about information that terrorists were planning an attack?
2. Why did you refuse Pakistani government’s offer of providing you a helicopter to take you to your destination and insisted on leading a street procession, knowing that scores of innocent supporters will bear the brunt of any attack?
3. Why did vanity have the best of you? Why wasn’t saving lives more important to you than showing the world that you’re still a populist leader?
4. Why did you remove the bullet proof glass on your secured truck that was supposed to protect everyone in case of an attack? At least three senior party members sustained injuries because of this oversight.
5. Why an important segment of the Pakistani public opinion believes that you have returned to Pakistan as an ‘American agent’?
6. Why didn’t you bring your husband and at least two of your three children [one is studying in Europe] along with you to Pakistan to underscore your commitment to our nation and to silence your critics who insist you came here alone to test the waters?
7. Why did you break the national consensus and announce you will allow foreign investigators access to our national hero Dr. A. Q. Khan?
8. Why did you inform an American audience that you will allow foreign forces to conduct military operations on Pakistani soil?
9. Why do you refuse to treat us Pakistanis as intelligent people who by now are fully aware that you and your husband have been found involved in scandalous corruption incidents? Why can’t you come clean on your alleged wealth of $ 1.5 billion dollars?
10. How come you have joined India, Hamid Karzai, and the usual bunch of Pakistan-bashers in targeting and attempting to eliminate Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, which are an asset for any nation and a bulwark against saboteurs and criminals?
My one last observation is the distasteful way in which Mrs. Bhutto cracked a joke with foreign reporters at the end of the press conference she held at her house on the Karachi carnage.
Over 600 people were killed and injured because of her and she had the gall to stand there in front of rolling cameras to laugh and chuckle at what happened.
Somehow this and the questions above reinforce the widespread skepticism across Pakistan about the quality of leadership that Mrs. Bhutto and the other power contenders will bring to the nation.
Mr. Quraishi heads the Pakistan Project at FurmaanRealpolitik, an independent think tank based in Islamabad. He also hosts a foreign policy show on state run PTV Network. He can be reached at aq@ahmedquraishi.com
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