Mick Hartley

In the Times, Fatima Bhutto deplores the dynastic nature of the Pakistan People’s Party:

When Fatima Bhutto heard that her estranged aunt had been assassinated she put aside decades of family feuding to mourn with her relatives at the ancestral home in Pakistan.

Three days later, when Benazir Bhutto’s 19-year-old son, Bilawal, was anointed head of the Pakistan People’s Party, Fatima maintained a respectful silence, despite whispers that she was the real Bhutto heir.

But now, two weeks on, she has broken that silence to launch a blistering attack on her cousin’s appointment, accusing those around him of perpetuating dynastic politics and trying to cash in on his mother’s blood.

While applauding Fatima’s sentiments, it has to be said that there’s some family history here which just might go some way to explaining her outburst:

Fatima’s father was Murtaza Bhutto, Benazir’s younger brother and the eldest son of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was Pakistan’s first populist Prime Minister until he was deposed in a coup in 1977 and executed.

Murtaza led a resistance movement from Afghanistan, returning to Pakistan to challenge Benazir’s leadership of the PPP. He was killed in a police shootout in Karachi in 1996, while she was Prime Minister. Murtaza’s Lebanese-Syrian wife, Ghinwa, has always blamed Benazir and has run a splinter faction of the PPP ever since. Benazir, meanwhile, derided Ghinwa as a “belly dancer” and disputed her inheritance of the family homes in Karachi and Larkana. “It was not a pleasant relationship we had at all,” Fatima said.

I love that “belly dancer” jibe.

So, is Fatima considering any kind of political career herself? You know – her being a Bhutto and all:

The parallels between Fatima and her aunt are striking: Benazir studied at Harvard and Oxford before returning to Pakistan and taking over the PPP aged 24. Fatima returned to Pakistan two years ago after completing a BA in Middle Eastern studies at Columbia University and an MA in South Asian government and politics at SOAS in London.

Fatima has also published a book of poetry aged 15 and another on the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir.

So far, she has resisted the urge to run for Parliament, confining herself to campaigning for her mother and writing her weekly columns. She admits, though, that politics is in her blood. “If there was an opportunity for new faces to come up and new voices to be heard and if I could be of service in some way, I wouldn’t say no,” she said. “But I’m not interested in being a symbol for anyone.”