As a party loyalist Ms Faruqui has no choice but to sing swan songs in praise of Mr Bhutto.
KARACHI: This is with reference to Sharmila Faruqui’s article of January 11 titled “A leader par excellence” where she has called Zulfikar Ali Bhutto a “visionary” and even compared him to Lenin and Chairman Mao.
As a party loyalist Ms Faruqui has no choice but to sing swan songs in praise of Mr Bhutto. But in doing so she seems to have ignored Mr Bhutto’s role in the East Pakistan fiasco. Instead of praising him, she should have mentioned the fact that when Mujibur Rahman’s party won the general elections in 1970, it was Mr Bhutto who did not concede.
Before massively rigging the election in 1977, Mr Bhutto had made the cardinal blunder of appointing General Zia as his army chief over the heads of his seniors. This was very poor judgment as the future would show. And his slogan of “Roti, kapra aur makan” may have been catchy and appealing to ordinary people, but neither his government nor the other PPP ones that followed have been able to come good on it in practice.
Safir A Siddiqui
Published in The Express Tribune, January 11th, 2011.
