Pakistani Politics

Based on the little I know of Pakistan's internal power struggles, this article notes what I think is a watershed event in the current political armwrestling. The thrust of the article - former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto being barred from coming elections by the military dictator, U.S. ally Pervez Musharraf - comes as no surprise: who would expect a military dictator under fire from all sides to allow his #1 opponent to hold office? He's vowed to arrest her if she enters the country. However, the big news to me is that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has thrown "his support behind Ms. Bhutto", his longtime rival.

For the uninitiated, Pakistan has had a revolving-door since its 1947 independence, cycling through corrupt elected leaders and military reformer/dictators. Benazir Bhutto's father was hanged in the late 1970's after he lost a war in which India aided East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in seceding. Benazir was an undergrad at Harvard at the time. My mother worked in the Harvard Bursar's Office at the time, and remembers young Benazir coming in and saying that she could no longer pay tuition, given the coup against her father. My mom's boss let Benazir finish school for free.

Benazir became Prime Minister with the help of the powerful People's Party of Pakistan machine - "They could run a donkey here and it would win" - and ran one of the most corrupt regimes of the 1990's. Her corruption alienated Pakistani's, who still consider corruption a prime issue, according to the NYTimes article. Until just recently Sharif and Bhutto, longtime rivals, were jockeying for position to take over from Musharraf in the event of free elections. Now Sharif is willing to step aside in order to help oust Musharraf, who is actually probably a lot better for Pakistan right now, in my humble opinion. Anyway, read the article - it's very informative.