Patriarch: Party needs 'real Bhutto'

MIR BHUTTO, Pakistan - The elevation of slain former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's husband and son to succeed her as leaders of Pakistan's largest opposition party is reopening fissures that have divided the powerful political family for decades.

To Mumtaz Bhutto, the septuagenarian patriarch of the 700,000-strong Bhutto tribe, Asif Ali Zardari and his son, Bilawal, are interlopers. The leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party, he said in an interview yesterday, should have gone to "a real Bhutto."

Mumtaz Bhutto's comments reflect the important roles that family, tribe and ethnicity continue to play 60 years after independence from British colonial rule, and that are one reason why democracy has failed to put down strong roots.

The Bhuttos are ethnic Sindhis. Zardari is from the Baluch ethnic group. His son used the last name Zardari until after his mother's assassination last week, when he changed it to Bhutto Zardari in what some saw as a move to perpetuate the political dynasty.

Mumtaz Bhutto was a founding member of the party established by his cousin Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir's father and Pakistan's first democratically elected prime minister. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was toppled in a 1977 military coup and executed in 1979.

"The party has come into existence on the name and the sweat and the blood of the Bhutto family," asserted Mumtaz, 74, who lives on a grand country estate in Mirpur Bhutto, the original family village in southern Sindh province. "Therefore, the leadership should either have gone to Sanam or Murtaza's son or daughter."

Sanam, Benazir's sister, has never taken any active role in politics. Murtaza, Benazir's brother, saw himself as his father's true political heir but was gunned down in Karachi by police in 1996, leaving a daughter, Fatima, now 25, and son, Zulfiqar Ali, 18.

Fatima Bhutto and her stepmother, Ghinwa, have publicly accused Benazir and Asif Zardari of complicity in Murtaza's death, which took place when Benazir was prime minister and which remains unsolved.

Benazir had said Murtaza was killed by people who wanted to "frame" her for his murder. Sanam always sided with Benazir, and it is believed that Sanam's relations with Murtaza's children remain tense, even after Benazir's death.

Mumtaz Bhutto said in the interview: "The Zardaris have made no sacrifices for the party, whereas the [Bhutto] family have made big sacrifices. The Zardaris have just profited from it."

Farhattullah Babar, a spokesman for the Pakistan Peoples Party, said that "whatever Mumtaz Bhutto is saying, he is saying out of spite for Benazir Bhutto, spite and frustration, because he is now out in the political wilderness."

As Bilawal, 19, will continue his studies at Britain's Oxford University, Sunday's announcement that father and son will cochair the PPP means that Zardari - once jailed for seven years on corruption and murder charges that were never proved - is actually running the PPP for now.

"This will split the party very badly," Mumtaz Bhutto said. Zardari "has no political background or acumen. I think this will lead to break-up. Total disintegration."

So far, the PPP has accepted the succession plan.

Sanam Bhutto also endorsed it. She said in a statement, "I believe that the resolution of the issue of leadership in accordance with [Benazir's] will has not only saved the party from a crisis of leadership but will also strengthen it further."

Fatima Bhutto, a graduate of Columbia University, who was tapped as a future challenger to lead the party even when Benazir was alive, has made no claim to her grandfather's legacy. But in a local newspaper article, she acknowledged she never reconciled with her aunt.

"I never agreed with her politics," she wrote. "... But in death . . . perhaps there is a moment to call for calm."