Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari

I spent the best part of my life watching my mother fight the forces of patriarchy: Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari

These are historic times for the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). It is the third mainstream political organisation in Pakistan, after Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and Jamaat-e-Islami, to have completed 50 years of its existence. It is also the only party in the country to have come to power as well as act as the opposition four times across five decades. It has survived the depredations of a brutal military regime under General Ziaul Haq, one that overthrew its first government and hanged its founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Its top leadership has fought off multiple trials, arrests and imprisonments – even exile – since 1977, including during the governments of its civilian opponents in the 1990s and the military regime of General (retd) Pervez Musharraf in the 2000s. It has lost hundreds of its workers and members to acts of terrorism over the last 10 years or so, the most eminent among them Benazir Bhutto, a two-time prime minister and the first woman to head the government in a Muslim country. Along the way, the party’s political obituary has been written multiple times — only to be proven premature.

Over the last few years, PPP’s electoral fortunes have been sliding downwards outside Sindh — some would say irretrievably so. The party’s young chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and his father Asif Ali Zardari have been making strenuous efforts to stem its declining share of votes and support, especially in Punjab, but so far they have achieved only limited success. The obituary writers, meanwhile, have been out and active again. Will they be proven wrong one more time? Here, the Herald asks Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari in a no-holds-barred conversation about the PPP’s past, present and future.

Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari. I draw inspiration from all of them but naturally my mother [Benazir Bhutto] casts a long shadow on my thinking and ideology. Each of them represented the statecraft and politics needed for the times. My grandfather [Zulfikar Ali Bhutto] brought in a radical left-wing agenda when he saw Pakistan being choked by elite forces and he moved against them in ways the country had never seen before. He brought the vulnerable into the political mix and I am strongly wedded to the principle of defending the weak.

I spent the best part of my life watching my mother fight the forces of patriarchy and authoritarianism at different levels and this resistance to both has seeped into many layers of my thinking. It is really for others to decide how it has shaped my personality.

My father took the reins of power when Pakistan was burning with the fires of hatred and vengeance. His reconciliation drew inspiration from my mother’s last book and set of ideas where she argued for fighting fear and hatred with inclusion and courage. The country benefited from reconciliation in order to bring in big changes such as the 18th Constitutional Amendment which was a new social contract. And, really, none of our policies deviated from the PPP’s core values.

as copied from herald on dt 5.2.2018