Word: bhutto
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...continue on, limping and damaged. But the legacy of loss, from the first father to the last mother, has taken its emotional toll. The cult of martyrdom has taken over where voices fail to be heard. In Lyari, walls are plastered with posters of local boys who died protecting Bhutto when she made her triumphant return to Karachi on Oct. 18. The question for Pakistan is how it can find life without celebrating death...
...When Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan in 1986 to resume her father's mantle, the nation responded with joy, and a landslide democratic victory. The daughter was accorded her father's adoration, but she also inherited his flaws. Her two truncated terms in office were plagued by incompetence and allegations of corruption. Twice she was ousted, and in 1999 she chose exile over remaining in Pakistan under the rule of yet another military dictator, Pervez Musharraf. Her return eight years later was supposed to herald a new beginning for the traumatized nation...
...Benazir Bhutto's assassination is a body blow to the troubled but strategically vital state of Pakistan. It removes from the scene a secular, liberal, pro-Western leader. It gives momentum to Pakistan's jihadis in their campaign to Talibanize the country, and it edges Pakistan closer toward Islamic revolution. Her death is also, of course, a tragedy for her family, including the three children she leaves motherless. But the horror of Bhutto's end should not blind us to her mediocre legacy, and it is misleading to depict her as any sort of martyr for freedom and democracy...
...Bhutto's instincts were highly autocratic. Within her Pakistan People's Party, she had herself declared the lifetime president and refused to let her brother Mir Murtaza challenge her for its leadership. He was shot dead by police officers while Benazir was Prime Minister; his wife Ghinwa and daughter Fatima believe Benazir was complicit in having him killed. She colluded in wider human-rights abuses. Amnesty International accused her government of having one of the world's worst records of custodial deaths, abductions, killings and torture...
...from reforming herself in exile, Bhutto, as recently as this fall, kept a studied distance from the lawyers' movement that led the civil protests against President Pervez Musharraf's unconstitutional attempts to manipulate the Supreme Court. She also sidelined those in her party who supported the lawyers. Later, she said nothing to stop Musharraf from ordering the expulsion of Nawaz Sharif to Saudi Arabia, which removed from the election her most formidable democratic opponent. Many of her supporters regarded her deal with Musharraf as a betrayal of all her party stood for. Her final act, in her will...