Mohtarma’s legacy: to never give up

BB’s sacrifice on December 27, 2007 will live on as tale of bravery inspiring struggles against extremism and...

Five years ago, the forces that our state had nurtured for long killed the brightest of our politicians. Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto sounds heavy as a title but there can be no better phrase to signify her stature and the immensity of her sacrifice. The recent judgment by the Supreme Court has vindicated BB’s stance that through the 1990s, the civil-military bureaucratic complex conspired to defeat and keep her out of politics. History has proved her right and even a Supreme Court not known for its tilt towards the PPP had no choice but to decide on facts.

When BB entered active politics, her detractors were far too many. From the powerful establishment to the right-wing media and her ‘uncles’ (older party stalwarts), everyone predicted that she would fail and the PPP would disintegrate. She proved everyone wrong and demonstrated in her 20s her tenacity and capability to resist Pakistan’s most insidious and brutal dictatorship. By the time she returned to Pakistan in 1986, her stature was almost iconic. However, the decade that followed pitted her against a restructured Pakistan where political engineering especially in Punjab made her play the power game to stay relevant as well to guard against the wily games of her adversaries.

Of course, she made mistakes as prime minister and perhaps, as a politician, too. But she never gave up on her core principles of a democratic, federal and enlightened Pakistan. Today, Pakistan’s best social sector service delivery architecture, comprising 100,000 lady health workers, was her brainchild. She launched the anti-Polio campaign and by the end of the 1990s, we had almost eradicated the virus. These are not minor achievements in a country where the people’s welfare has seldom been on the agenda. Her legacy lives on in the shape of Asia’s largest social protection programme — the Benazir Income Support Programme — which provides cash assistance to poorest seven million households in the country.

All political parties including that of Nawaz Sharif, who earlier labelled BB as a ‘security risk’, have espoused Benazir’s vision for a revised security doctrine. The elements of the deep state have not roadblocked the current government to open up trade with India and relax the stringent visa regime. BB reset the policy vision for Pakistan and in the process also reversed her father’s national security doctrines, which still inform the hardliners in the military establishment.

BB did pay a heavy price for her engagement in politics though. For decades she was relentlessly defamed. Her character was attacked and she was even ridiculed to be a mother or expect a child while in office. Later, the favourite stick of the right-wing — corruption — was used against her to tarnish her image as a politician. Add to this, stories of her sell-out to India and the United States while the military managed the foreign policy, the nuclear programme and regional adventurism. He close aide during 1993-96 tenure, Zafar Hilaly, in a series published in The Friday Times (December 5-11, 2008), has recounted how marginalised she was in setting the Afghanistan policy. Despite her flexibility to work with the junta, she was thrown out of power in 1996 and soon found herself in exile thereafter.

The years in exile, 1997-2007, comprised political isolation and opprobrium at home. But her constituents — millions of poor and the dispossessed — knew what it was all about. It was the tale that their lives were made of: the powerful versus the powerless. Her return to Pakistan in 2007 demolished years of propaganda once again when she was received by hundreds of thousands. This was a different BB: not too willing to compromise on the basics so her stance on extremism was bold and determined. The junta did not want her to be present in the country when the elections took place. So, the terrorists gave her a clear message on her return as her procession was bombed and hundreds of innocent PPP workers died in the mayhem. She did not relent and almost marched towards death.

The seasoned BB, marking 30 years of active politics, in 2007 had also ensured a consensus via the Charter of Democracy with Nawaz Sharif. This is perhaps the most formidable of BB’s legacy. Her party’s government is completing the term and the Opposition led by Sharifs has refused to scuttle the process by involving military unlike the 1990s.

Today, Pakistan is a poorer place. It has lost the clearest and most popular voice against extremism. Sadly, the protracted process of bringing her killers to justice only indicates how difficult it is to nab the powerful backers of extremists who reside in the most protected enclaves within the state itself. It will only happen with civilian ascendancy and undoing decades of unaccountable rule by a few unelected institutions.

BB’s sacrifice on December 27, 2007 will live on as a tale of bravery inspiring struggles against extremism and bigotry. And, not giving up despite the odds.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 27^th, 2012.