Too little, too late

KARACHI: This is in reference to a report in your paper regarding Bilawal Bhutto cancelling plans to attend a rally in the UK where it was expected that he would launch his political career. The cancellation came after the president came in for heavy criticism for having gone to France and the UK at a time when the country was dealing with the worst floods in its history.

One optimistic commentator on your website’s comments section voiced hope that this signalled a sign of an “emerging political awareness by Bilawal Bhutto, and an attempt to put some distance between himself and his father” but more cynical ones were quick to dismiss it as a “publicist-advised operation clean up after his father’s faux pas”.

There is no way to tell if Bilawal Bhutto made this decision himself but it was the right thing to do. But it seems too little, too late. A real sign of political maturity would have been to convince his father to cut short his trip, or at the least, travel back to Pakistan himself to let Pakistanis, especially thousands of his party’s diehard supporters in Sindh, many of whom are on the brink of losing everything from the floods, know that he was by their side in these difficult times.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 9^th, 2010.