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Old 28-12-2012, 01:54 PM   #1
mullu
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Default Bilawal Bhutto is No Rahul Gandhi



Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who made his first major political speech Thursday in Pakistan, appears a much more eager politician than Rahul Gandhi.

Both men have a lot in common. Mr. Zardari is the son of slain former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Mr. Gandhi’s father, former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, also was assassinated.

Both men’s parties rely heavily on the widespread recognition of the families’ names to lure voters come election time. Mr. Zardari’s grandfather was Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, another former prime minister who was hanged by a military dictatorship in 1979. Mr. Gandhi’s great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, was independent India’s first prime minister and his grandmother, Indira Gandhi, was Indian prime minister in the 1970s and early 1980s.

But there’s also much that separates the two standard-bearers of these political dynasties.

Mr. Bhutto Zardari’s speech, on the fifth anniversary of his mother’s assassination by a suicide bomber during election campaigning in Pakistan, was fiery.

He took on the judiciary – which has been at loggerheads with his father, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari – for failing to conclude trials of people arrested in connection with his mother’s murder.

Speaking in front of Pakistan People’s Party leaders at Garhi Khuda Baksh, site of the Bhutto family’s mausoleum in the southern Sindh province, Mr. Bhutto Zardari also vowed to stand up to those that want to take power from elected leaders.

“With Benazir Bhutto as my witness,” he said, “I promise you that the PPP will never fear terrorists or bow to dictators.”

Mr. Bhutto Zardari is only 24, which means he’s a year too young to contest general elections that must take place by May. But Farhatullah Babar, a PPP spokesman, said he would play a lead on-the-ground role in the polls.

“The PPP owes its strength to the Bhutto name and the Bhutto philosophy,” Mr. Babar said.

Mr. Gandhi, by contrast, did not enter politics until 2004, when, aged in his mid-30s, he stood for his mother’s former seat in Uttar Pradesh. He won but did not take a major leadership role in the Congress party until becoming general secretary in 2007.

He has appeared a reluctant politician and kept largely out of the limelight, generally refusing media interviews and making dry speeches. Despite calls from senior Congress politicians, he has yet to take a formal cabinet position though, like Mr. Bhutto Zardari, he is focusing on party building and state elections.

His mother, Congress President Sonia Gandhi, continues to wield the greatest power within the party, including pushing major social welfare initiatives.

In Pakistan, Mr. Bhutto Zardari since 2007 has been co-chairman of the PPP with his father. Mr. Zardari, who became the country’s president in 2008, continues to play the preeminent role in the party.

Mohammad Waseem, a political studies professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, expects Mr. Bhutto Zardari will take a hands-on role from now on.

The PPP, he says, has faced pressure from the Supreme Court this year to remove Mr. Zardari, the president, as its co-chairman. Letting the son play a larger role in the party could help make this problem go away, Mr. Waseem said.

The court has argued Mr. Zardari, as president, should be an impartial figure and should not hold other political posts after a constitutional amendment in 2010.

Despite almost constant fighting with the Supreme Court since 2008, Mr. Zardari’s administration looks set to become the first democratically-elected government in Pakistan’s history as an independent nation to complete a full term.

The court has claimed the government has blocked investigations into allegations of corruption involving Mr. Zardari dating to the 1990s. Earlier this year, it removed a PPP-appointed prime minister for failing to open graft investigations into the president. Mr. Zardari denies wrongdoing.

Ayaz Amir, a lawmaker with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Pakistan’s largest opposition party and the PPP’s main challenger for the upcoming elections, acknowledged the central role that Mr. Bhutto Zardari will play in the future.

“It’s like the Gandhis in India,” he said. “The leadership is associated with them.”

As to whether Mr. Bhutto Zardari’s time as an undergraduate at Oxford University, where he was captured in photographs partying with women, would hurt his electoral chances in Pakistan, Mr. Amir demurred.

“A boy having fun in England. That plays out well. It doesn’t hurt anyone,” he said. “The Islamists won’t vote for the PPP anyway,” he said.
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