Continuing BB’s mission

One of the greatest mysteries throughout mankind’s journey has been what makes people leaders and, beyond that, great leaders. These leaders also become symbols, not just for their supporters but also for countries they serve in.
My first experience about this was when I was a child and travelling in Turkey. A cab driver heard where I was from and said, ‘ah, Bhutto. Benazir Bhutto’. A name became the pride of a 10 year old.
I grew up in a house where bedtime tales were narrated not just from fiction but history as well and therefore since before I can remember I knew the name Bhutto. At school the mention of the name would cause debates whenever it was raised. But what was always noticeable was the passion of a Bhutto supporter. Cleaning ladies at school would speak of how they had ‘discovered’ self-respect because of Bhutto. The power of someone saying that was, and remains, breathtaking to me. I was not a PPP supporter but I was in awe of the party.
Benzair, to them, was always ‘BB’. Anyone familiar with the Urdu version ‘Bibi’ knows the layers of respect and affection it captures. This was politics but also a love affair and a deep bond of affection. To a child this was mesmerizing, as was BB. To many I knew, leader, sister, daughter, mother — all in one.
My first memory of BB is seeing her in the biggest sea of people I had ever seen on television when she landed in Lahore after years in exile. Even lifeless things seemed to be chanting with the crowds that day. Even a naïve child like me could tell that someone special had arrived. She had charm, intelligence, charisma beyond comparison and a resolve of steel.
I was never a fan of her governing policies or the egregious mistakes she made and ignored. But as a Pakistani, she was my pride. I knew that no description of Pakistan could be complete without her story; a woman prime minister in an Islamic Republic that had for so long been governed by military dictators. She allowed young women to dream big. Intentional or not, she breathed romance into Pakistanis’ lives.
BB was not the product of dynastic politics. Power was not handed to her on a platter. There was tumult, personal and national. There were struggles and battles, again personal and political. That day when she landed in Lahore was the first of her many victories. Through 11 years of dictatorial rule, propaganda and in the aftermath of a judicial murder somehow she kept a promise alive. In a country where death of human beings is cheap, many ideas die before being born. But the ideas of PPP were alive and well that day — they had lived through everything. We, the people, won that day. What a homecoming if ever there was one! It was a script only she could write — there is tragedy inherent in that statement.
Her killers may not realise this now but hangings, bombings and shootings only apply to physical beings—not to ideas. The ideas will live on. But will they be honoured?
During exile, both BB and Mian Sahab came up with the Charter of Democracy — that was another victory of national proportions. During her last rally, BB praised Mian Sahab and referred to him while discussing how to save Pakistan and to not elect ‘political orphans’. It is time for the PPP and PML(N) to come together and to honour their promise of saving Pakistan from political orphans.
BB’s death was every Pakistani’s loss and anyone who thinks or says otherwise is irrelevant for the purposes of any debate. If there is one thing any PPP supporter can learn from BB’s life it is how to keep an idea alive. Of course, there were disappointments. Allegations of corruption did not help and despite some courageous decisions not enough positions were taken on crucial matters. But important battles were taken up and seminal among them is her fight to correct the civil-military imbalance. There is a reason that the establishment had contempt for BB. She picked her battles and knew how to fight them.
To give due credit to PML-N, Mian Sahab has taken on the establishment in courageous ways too. In fact his criticism of the security establishment has made, for the most part, all the right points. Anyone who thinks that Imran Khan’s one line statement regarding controlling the ISI is courageous or a struggle is hopelessly naïve. You only need to read history to see who the puppets and puppeteers are in the new look PTI. Anyone who argues support for PTI by citing PML-N’s birth as being sponsored by the establishment is defeating their own argument. There is no reason to empower the establishment even though the people may have inadvertently done that in the past.
PPP and PML(N) have both taken on actual battles with the military establishment — and they both suffered. But there is hope: the two largest parties have the basic idea (correcting the civil military imbalance) right. Of course their implementation has faced obstacles and at other times the present PPP government has disappointingly backed down in face of increasing pressure.
The greatest tribute to BB would be keeping alive her fight at correcting the civil military imbalance. I was never a BB supporter and never voted for her but her basic fight was always obvious to me.
In present times a rhetoric that favours the establishment is gaining traction. We don’t need apologists for the military establishment. We need leaders who can question the skewed power structure in Pakistan.

The writer is a Barrister and an Advocate of the High Courts. He is currently pursuing an LLM at a law school in the United States. He can be reached at [email protected]