Benazir Bhutto was a woman of considerable charm and courage, a gifted, charismatic political leader and campaigner who could attract audiences in the tens of thousands, says Canada’s former high commissioner to Pakistan.
But Bhutto’s two stints as prime minister of Pakistan between 1988 and 1996 were characterized mostly by economic stagnation and by “the whiff of corruption on a very grand scale,” says Louis Delvoie, senior fellow at the Centre for International Relations at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.
Delvoie, who was posted to Pakistan from 1991 to 1994, said in an interview Thursday that he was shocked and saddened by the death of the woman he met on several occasions, and whose autographed picture he keeps on a bookcase in his study.
But he says Bhutto “managed to get through relatively few long-desired reforms in Pakistan” and surrounded herself with a coterie of rural landlords of her own background “who very frequently were not particularly competent and some of whom were thoroughly corrupt.”
“The whole adage: you don’t say ill of the dead. But I’m a professional political analyst and I look at all sides. I’m saddened by her death, but it doesn’t blind me to her shortcomings, either,” Delvoie said.
Politics are not for the faint of heart in Pakistan, Delvoie added. In Bhutto’s own family, “her father was executed, her two brothers were assassinated under mysterious conditions, and she herself spent prolonged periods in jail. This was a woman of considerable courage and fortitude in pursuing politics in Pakistan.”
Bhutto was the first woman to become prime minister of a Muslim country, a “considerable breakthrough,” he said. “But her pioneering role also had its downsides, in that for many very conservative Pakistanis, particularly males, this was not a suitable position for a woman, and a woman should not aspire to this. And she ran into opposition in her own country on those grounds.”
In power, she was unable to do much to advance the cause of women in Pakistan, he said, in part because she never achieved a full majority and “always had to be on the lookout for reactions of the Islamist political parties to any initiative she took.”
She did create police stations staffed entirely by women, “so as to protect women from the sexual harassment and the rape that they frequently encountered in regular police stations,” Delvoie says. “But she didn’t manage to change the legal system to protect women’s rights and she was unable to do all that much.”
Even so, members of Canada’s 300,000-strong Pakistani community expressed shock and sadness at Thursday’s killing, many predicting it will set back the causes of democracy and human rights. Some, however, said it could have been predicted in light of the rampant violence afflicting Pakistan.
At Virk Auto Services in Toronto, owner Mohamed Arshad said he took the morning off to watch the TV coverage of the tragedy.
“I feel so bad, so very sorry for her and her family,” said Arshad, smoking a cigarette. “She was a good lady. Some people say she was corrupt but she wasn’t. They got her dad, her brothers and now her.”
Afzaal Ahmed, a taxi driver who came to Canada 14 years ago, said he was shocked but not surprised at Bhutto’s death.
“Everybody was scared for her,” said Ahmed as he waited for his cab to be fixed. “The whole community is now crying for her. We cry for our loss. The future of the party is now up in the air.”
Shazab Afzal, a University of Toronto mechanical engineering student who works part-time at the garage, said he worries for the future of Pakistan.
“It will be harder to obtain democracy now,” said Afzal. “Not only was she trying to make a difference for Pakistan, she was a role model for women. No one spoke for the women of Pakistan but she did. Who will now?”
In Ottawa, a longtime Bhutto confidant and former speech writer remembered her as a fearless leader who put herself in danger for her cause, just as her father did a generation ago. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first popularly elected prime minister, was executed in Rawalpindi in 1979 following a military coup.
“The whole thing is so unreal,” said Farouk Rana, Pakistan’s high commissioner to Canada from 1994 to 1997. “She had referred to this particular danger, but she was a fearless, brave woman willing to take the risk like her father.”
Rana said Bhutto will be hard to replace.
“There are very capable people in her party, but she had that charisma, she was an icon,” he said. “To bring that kind of stature, to grow into that leadership, it takes time.”
Rana also dismissed critics who say Bhutto should not have appeared at public rallies, given the dangers.
“She was a very public figure; she believed in the politics of intimacy,” he said. “A politician of that variety does not confine herself to the livingrooms, she goes out to meet people and connect with them.”
Indeed, Tony Deen, past president of the Pakistan Canada Association of Waterloo-Wellington in Ontario, said Bhutto knew the risks she was taking and left herself vulnerable to harm.
“She wasn’t using any precaution to protect herself, which she should have done,” he said. “That country has so many extremists and al-Qaida and other terrorist groups that you just don’t walk into a country after saying certain things that a lot of people may not like.”
Even after a first assassination attempt after Bhutto’s return from exile Oct. 18, Deen said “she was leaving herself open. She was sitting right on top of these buses and she’s waving and she’s rallying with the crowd.”
But Raheel Raza, the Toronto-based author of Their Jihad … Not My Jihad, called Bhutto’s murder was “a blow in the face of democracy, human rights, women’s rights, everything that we look forward to in a democracy.”
Raza, who interviewed Bhutto five years ago, said Thursday’s slaying is seen as “a win for the Islamists, the extremists, because they have been allowed to take the life of a woman. They could never come to terms with the fact a woman could be leader and she would bring about democracy.”
Raza predicted the fallout from the assassination will be either civil war or the imposition of martial law.
Athar Zaidi, representing the Pakistan Canada Association in Calgary, pointed to news reports of “chaos in every major city in Pakistan.”
“Hopefully the government will control the turmoil that is going through the country.”
But Salim Karim, chair of Vancouver’s Islamic trust and a past president of the Pakistan Canada Association, predicted that “it will be a long time before Pakistan will be normal again.”
“I am praying that the people of Pakistan will behave properly,” he said. “We should think of her legacy instead of doing violence … It is not a time for finger-pointing and burning of cars.”
In Calgary, Syed Soharwardy, founder of Muslims Against Terrorism, called Bhutto a martyr and “one of the best leaders in the entire Muslim world.”
Her memory should continue to inspire others to fight for democracy and progress in Pakistan, Soharwardy said.
“It’s a tragedy,” said Aziz Khan as he and dozens of others filed out of afternoon prayers at the Markaz Ul Islam mosque in Edmonton, a city with a 7,000-strong Pakistani community.
“We just made prayers for all those who passed away, especially Benazir Bhutto. I think the whole community is in shock at hearing this sad news.”
“I am very saddened by this,” added Abdul Waheed. “I cried for her.”
Just watching the coverage of the assassination’s aftermath brought the head of the Association of Pakistani Canadians of Nova Scotia to tears.
“It’s a crime against humanity and a crime against democracy,” Khalid Chaudhry said. He recalled the speech Bhutto once gave in which she denounced terrorists as “the biggest enemy of democracy” and said the world must band together fight them. Meanwhile, two or three bomb blasts were going off around her.
Chaudhry saluted Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to declare three days of mourning, endorsing his declaration to “crush” the enemy.
Shafqat Ali, who moved from Rawalpindi to Montreal in 1999 and settled his family a year later in the Toronto area, said he could barely put into words how he felt about the murder of Bhutto, a politician he has never supported at the ballot box, but still respected.
“She was the only popular political leader in Pakistan,” said Ali. “If you don’t like somebody, it doesn’t mean you can kill them,” said the exasperated business owner, who believed political forces, not religious ones, were behind her assassination.
Choudhry Javed Gujar, president of the Canadian wing of Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party, said she was a “brilliant lady. She was a visionary, humble leader and mother of three children who will be missed.”
Rabbi Reuven Bulka, co-president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, called the attack a human tragedy. Bhutto, he said, “is a human being. She breathes like everyone else and has a heart and a family and friends and loved ones.
“She was a champion of the people and the hope is that whoever it is that succeeds her and represents her will be able to continue the things she stood for so that her legacy will be one that impact heavily and positively on Pakistan’s future.”
In Windsor, Ont., Syed Imtiaz Ahmad, an Eastern Michigan University professor and former longtime head of computer science at the University of Windsor, said Thursday that Pakistan would calm down tremendously if Musharraf were to say he would step aside. “He should say, “˜We’ll put in an interim cabinet of three people,’ or whatever it is. Let the country be ruled by committee, with the sole purpose of preparing for an election.”
“She was a champion of democracy,” said electrical engineer Mohammad Khan, who moved to Canada from Peshawar 40 years ago. “She was a very experienced politician. She was liked by the whole world.
“I don’t know who will replace her. There’s a big vacuum.”
With files from CanWest newspapers
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