Daily Times Editorial Dec 15, 2013

Molla’s hanging Abdul Quader Molla of Bangladesh’s Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) became the first person accused of atrocities during the country’s independence war to be hanged. Whereas a number of senior leaders of the JI in that country are behind bars awaiting trials on similar charges, it fell to the lot of Molla to be the first to have his trial completed and be sentenced to death. A last minute hoped for reprieve when the Supreme Court took notice proved infructuous when the court refused to reverse the death sentence. There has been concern internationally that the tribunals trying the accused for their role in massacres carried out by the JI’s militias, Al Badr and Al Shams against intellectuals and ordinary citizens in what was then East Pakistan do not meet the highest international standards of fair trial. There also does not appear to be in place a proper appeals process to ensure justice is not only done, but is seen to be done. The surprising fact is that these trials and the hanging of Molla come 42 years after the events that finally led to the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent country following an army crackdown, an indigenous insurgency led by the Mukti Bahini and a relatively short war with India that saw the Pakistan garrison in the eastern wing cut off and finally forced to surrender on December 16, 1971. The shame and ignominy attached to the whole Bangladesh episode was so embarrassing that the political and military establishment that followed the Yahya military junta responsible for the crackdown and atrocities in East Pakistan thought discretion the better part of valour. Even Mr Bhutto’s Hamood-ur-Rehman Commission report was suppressed. This was in line with the mood that gripped the remaining Pakistan’s elite: brush the whole tragic episode under the carpet and pretend it never happened. As a result, not only did we fail to learn any lessons from the tragedy, we have continued to repeat the same mistakes again and again and been responsible for subsequent generations being kept ignorant of this bloody chapter in our history, so much so that millions of young people today in Pakistan may not even know that Bangladesh was once part of Pakistan or the reasons why it separated. Not only this, we have never formally apologized for the atrocities visited on our Bengali brothers and sisters. It should not surprise us therefore that whereas the government and the foreign office have acted with restraint so as not to appear to be interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign country with which we enjoy good relations bilaterally and as a member of SAARC, the Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali has once more tooted a tune at variance with that restraint. Sounding like an ultranationalist JI spokesman, the feisty minister’s statement painted Molla as a hero of Pakistan, whereas Molla and his ilk helped ensure because of their bloodletting that East Pakistan would definitely break away, sooner or later. How does that make him a hero? This is like saying General Yahya, responsible squarely for the breakup of the country, should be considered a hero of Pakistan. Or, if the argument is stretched further, like our JI declaring an enemy terrorist like Hakeemullah Mehsud a shaheed (martyr). The JI, however, is not in power. Chaudhry Nisar’s party, the PML-N, is. How can the prime minister allow one of his ministers to shoot off at the mouth from time to time without even a nod at the government’s policy stance? Pakistan still has much to answer for vis-à-vis Bangladesh. Had we shown even a modicum of the large heartedness Chaudhry Nisar would have liked Bangladeshi Prime Minister Hasina Wajid to show in Molla’s case, we would have formally apologised to our brethren and sisters in Bangladesh soon after the tragedy, or at the very least at some point in the last 42 years. Sadly, we did not, and have now convinced ourselves it is so much water under the bridge and there is no need now to even contemplate such a possibility. We should not attempt to wax indignant in matters concerning our erstwhile eastern wing, given the above sad facts. While our moral standing in these matters is weak, to say the least, there are nevertheless issues with Molla’s hanging that do not sit easily with rational minds. First, the length of time that has transpired since the crimes for which he was convicted, the advanced age of the accused, reservations about the trial and appeals process all militated against the death penalty in a world increasingly moving away from the ultimate and irreversible punishment. Under the circumstances, perhaps deprivation of liberty for life of the accused may have proved more appropriate, avoided the taint of either revenge (versus reconciliation a la the late lamented Mandela) or political partisan motivation. This last suspicion is rooted in the domestic divide in Bangladesh in the approach to upcoming elections, which have pitted the ruling Awami League against the main opposition Bangladesh National Party and its close ally, the JI. The violent reaction to the hanging strengthens this argument. Avoiding hanging would also have avoided offering the ultra-nationalists like Chaudhry Nisar and our JI the opportunity to make political capital out of this turn of events and causing diplomatic embarrassment in our relations with Bangladesh.

Daily Times Editorial Dec 13, 2013

Bouquets and brickbats The second (2007) and third (2009) coming of retired Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry contrasted sharply with his going. It is a sad comment to record that when he retired, society was split in its opinion of him. A brief listing of the forces disillusioned with his tenure since 2009 and the reasons for this turnaround may throw some light on the issue. The media, which had stood unified for his restoration was angry (except for one ‘favoured’ media house) over its exclusion from coverage of the full court reference on the day of the CJP’s departure. The leading lights of the lawyers community who were in the forefront of the movement for the restoration of the judiciary, including Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, Ali Ahmed Kurd and Asma Jahangir, have been critical of the CJP for over-reach, politicising the office of the CJP, and turning his back on the common man who struggled in the restoration movement. The Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) has suspended one of its vice presidents for misusing the SCBA’s name in inviting the CJP for a dinner when the SCBA had decided not to do so in protest against the thrashing of lawyers before the Supreme Court (SC) the other day. The PPP and its young co-chairperson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari have made no bones about their delight at seeing the back of the CJP and hoping for restoration of an independent and unbiased judiciary (a reference to the perceived bias against the previous PPP-led government and its leadership). All this amounts to a tsunami of disillusionment and alienation of his foremost erstwhile supporters for his conduct since 2009 and dragging the SC into controversy, with the collateral loss of respect and dignity of the court. Despite this obvious fall from the pristine heights of respect the CJP enjoyed after restoration, he seems unrepentant, at least if his remarks at the full court reference are any guide. The outgoing CJP expressed the hope that the SC would continue to take notice of violations of fundamental rights, including the right to life, by the executive and other state institutions. The implied doctrine enunciated by the CJP relies on the judiciary fulfilling its duty to step in if the executive fails. While this sounds good in theory, it carries grave risks and pitfalls. The doctrine implies the judiciary can and should set itself up above all other state institutions, with no bar or restraint on judicial intervention. If followed in letter and sprit, this doctrine could open the door to judicial dictatorship, a charge mutedly made during the CJP’s tenure. Even if the argument of the CJP that the judiciary in Pakistan’s past had been supine (a charge from which the CJP himself could not be excluded) is accepted, this does not mean the pendulum of correction should now swing so far the other way that a judicial overlordship over state and society follows. The SC’s interventionist posture and providing direct access to petitioners and the aggrieved under the outgoing CJP meant a vote of no-confidence in the lower tiers of the justice system without any serious effort to correct the system’s failings and eliminated the appellate process. Well intentioned the CJP’s efforts may have been, but their consequences will be debated for a long time to come. The incoming CJP, Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani, has administered a welcome and fresh breath of air to the affairs of the superior judiciary by delineating his vision of where the SC should head. The new CJP says the court should consider and determine the limits of the SC’s suo motu powers. He has argued that the fine line of distinction between the requirements of Articles 199 (setting out the powers of the higher courts) and 184(3) has been blurred. The jurisdiction of the SC under 184(3) should be reviewed to discourage frivolous petitions and prevent misuse by vested interests. CJP Jillani recounted the exponential growth of petitions under 184(3) and through the SC’s Human Rights Cell. While conceding that the SC’s mandate under Articles 184(3) and 187 meant filling the gaps between the law and social dynamics, the value of the trichotomy of powers and the fair trial provisions of Article 10A had to be deferred to. Pakistan can now look forward to sanity and appropriateness underlined by judicial restraint being restored.

Daily Times Editorial Dec 12, 2013

The Chief Justice’s legacy Nothing sums up the view of large parts of public opinion regarding the legacy of Chief Justice (CJ) Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry than the unfortunate incident that occurred on the very day he left office on Wednesday. A traditional full court reference saw the entire media except one media house turfed out of coverage of the occasion, leading to an uproar in the excluded media as a whole amidst charges that this indicated the nexus between the Supreme Court (SC) under the CJ and the ‘favoured’ media house. Despite many good judgements of the SC during the last almost five years since the restoration of the superior judiciary, many will see this as further proof of the partisanship, operating on the basis of likes and dislikes, and practicing pick and choose justice under the outgoing CJ. Whether one agrees with this contention in part or in full, it can be argued that the liberal use of suo motu (at least 118 notices) and contempt of court (at least 100 cases) powers during the last five years not only brought the court into the fold of controversy, it also militated against the mountain of backlog of cases before the SC and the judicial system as a whole, a task the CJ is criticized for not addressing. This new jurisprudence reversed the normal order of the SC’s role as a largely appellate court to one where it was exceedingly proactive in its original jurisdiction role. It is undeniable that state institutions in the country have never been citizen-friendly, and therefore e the SC’s taking up the cudgels on behalf of aggrieved individuals and parties to provide justice and relief is admirable. However, it is also a matter of concern that the overuse of such powers (unprecedentedly high) damaged the prestige and respect of the court. The SC under CJ Chaudhry became hyper interventionist, causing encroachments on the turf of other state institutions such as the executive, parliament, election commission and others, eroding in the process the division and trichotomy of powers enjoined in the constitution and making governance that much more difficult in the midst of the myriads of crises afflicting state and society. CJ Chaudhry’s eventful and as some have described it, roller coaster era has come to an end, but the legacy he leaves behind will have an equal measure of admirers and critics, making the task of the incoming CJ Tassaduq Hussain Jilani that much more difficult in restoring some semblance of appropriateness to the SC’s affairs, which he has promised to do. One only has to cast one’s mind back to the respect enjoyed by the outgoing CJ when he was finally restored in 2009 to the controversies dogging his footsteps now to understand that the absence of time-honoured judicial restraint, whatever its effects on other institutions, has also ended up eroding the respect and dignity of the superior judiciary that it deserves. Relations between the Bar and the bench are at an all-time low, resulting in the conspicuous absence of the kind of respectful farewell outgoing CJs receive traditionally. This is even more ironic given that it was the lawyers’ community that was in the forefront of the movement for the restoration of the judiciary. How the mighty have fallen. The critique of CJ Chaudhry's manner of running the SC revolves around playing to the gallery, interfering in matters normally beyond the scope of the court and lying within the purview of other state institutions, choosing high profile cases that took up most of the SC’s time at the expense of the normal (and absent) effort to reduce the huge backlog of cases that justifies the old maxim: justice delayed (in this case horrendously delayed) is justice denied. No one could possibly argue that the good work of the court under CJ Chaudhry be overturned along with the controversial, i.e. we should refrain from throwing the baby out with the bath water. However, it is hoped that the change of guard will persuade the judiciary, and especially the SC, to revert to a more appropriate stance on litigation, appellate versus original jurisdiction, and respecting the trichotomy of powers that lies virtually in tatters. That strengthens the argument for other checks and balances to kick in against our opaque and non-responsive system of government in which much happens or goes on without let or hindrance, more often than not against the interests of state and society. Whether however, the courts are to be the instruments for the undeniable need to cleanse and make transparent governance under our fledgling democracy, at the expense arguably of their own dignity and respect, remains a moot point and a challenge.

Daily Times Editorial Dec 11, 2013

The wages of Imran’s ‘sins’ US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel has been hosted in Islamabad in the midst of ‘some frictions’ in the US-Pakistan relationship. It is the first visit by a US Defence Secretary for four years, a period that saw extreme ups and downs in the two countries’ relations. The current visit takes place in the context of the looming withdrawal of US/NATO forces from Afghanistan next year, with the issue of a residual US presence in that country still a contentious matter between Washington and the Karzai government. Pakistan is considered by all, including the US, as critical to restoring peace in Afghanistan, particularly in the wake of the withdrawal of foreign forces. Pakistan too is, or at least should be, a stakeholder with a deep interest in its own right in peace in Afghanistan, which is likely to affect directly the situation vis-à-vis terrorism inside Pakistan itself. Within this framework, the discussions the US Secretary of State had with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the newly installed COAS General Raheel Sharif have by and large been kept under wraps for their sensitivity, except what was considered kosher for sharing with the public. The information put out was not surprising, given that the respective positions and concerns of both sides are no secret. Whereas Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told Mr Hagel that the drone strikes were counterproductive and hurting the government’s efforts to counter terrorism, by which he meant that the peace dialogue his government wants to conduct with the terrorists was being affected (e.g. the killing of Hakeemullah Mehsud, chief of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, on the eve of hoped for talks), the US side stated that Mr Hagel wants to tackle the frictions between his country and Pakistan head on. Further, Hagel pressed for keeping the supply routes to and from Afghanistan open otherwise the US Congress may withhold aid to Pakistan. This demand and threat must be seen in the light of the withdrawn statement by Hagel’s aides that the supply route was about to reopen. He also reiterated the long standing US demand that Pakistan stop giving safe havens to the Afghan Taliban on its soil. Nawaz Sharif repeated his government’s support for the Afghan reconciliation process, implying the US side too should perhaps abandon its ambiguity on the issue and come out in support of Pakistan’s reconciliation efforts with its own terrorists. Chuck Hagel's aides were forced to withdraw their premature and overly optimistic statement about the restoration of the supply lines because the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) of Imran Khan, whose stoppage of NATO trucks by threatening violence against the truck drivers had caused Washington to announce a stoppage through Pakistan out of concern for the safety of the drivers, had announced a continuation of its disruption of the supply route from Torkham. Since the PTI leads the government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, its cadres manning the ‘check posts’ to stop NATO trucks are in no fear of being prevented by the police from their ‘vigilante’ actions. Arguably though, the national highways and the question of allowing or stopping the supply routes lie within the purview of the federal government. But Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N government has been playing on the back foot, presumably so as not to be seen as taking up the cudgels on behalf of the west, particularly the US. But this ‘softly, softly’ approach has meant the provincial (PTI) tail has been allowed to wag the federal dog. If the Imran Khan-led PTI’s stoppage of the US/NATO supply lines costs the country bilateral and possibly multilateral aid, these wages will have been paid squarely because of Imran Khan’s 'sins'.

Daily Times Editorial Dec 8, 2013

Mandela’s legacy The entire world mourns and pays tribute to Nelson Mandela, the icon of South Africa’s and the world’s struggle for democracy, human rights, dignity, and against racial prejudice and discrimination. It comes to very few men to change history, let alone rewrite it. Mandela’s compelling gifts of head and heart overcame entrenched hatreds and mistaken notions of racial superiority to forge what has been dubbed a ‘rainbow nation’ of all hues in his beloved South Africa. Brave and principled whites, albeit relatively few in number, were always apart of the struggle against apartheid, reinforcing belief in humankind’s innate goodness, rationality and ability to overcome evil, no matter how long it takes. Countries such as the US, France, Britain and even the UN have paid tribute to the great man by flying their flags at half-mast. India has not only followed suit, it has declared five days of official mourning. Pakistan has lagged behind in this regard. The only thing we can boast of is a unanimous resolution adopted on Friday by both houses of parliament to pay respect to Nelson Mandela, but we could easily have done more. Our relatively low-key response to this seminal event reflects the nature of our state and society. Meantime current South African President Jacob Zuma and the African National Congress (ANC) government have announced that an official mourning ceremony will take place on December 10 to supplement the people’s mourning at Mandela’s home. His body will lie in state in the capital Pretoria from December 11 to 13, and he will be buried in his Eastern Cape hometown of Qunu on December 15. While international attention is focused on the great man and his passing, ‘revisionist’ attempts to paint Mandela in ‘saintly’ hues have begun in a mistaken attempt to ‘not speak ill of the dead’. Mandela’s actual record of struggle, including the resort to arms against an unyielding and fascist apartheid regime are being papered over, and his later ‘peaceful revolution’ appears the only game in town. Similarly, ‘embarrassment’ appears to have overtaken even his well wishers regarding his close ties and solidarity with figures like Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Libya’s late Colonel Gaddafi and Palestine’s late Yasser Arafat. On the latter ‘whitewashing’ of Mandela’s image to make it acceptable to today’s political correctness, it needs to be stated that history cannot be ‘revised’ in this way without truth and its lessons becoming a casualty. The 1960s were a period of armed revolutionary and national liberation struggles throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America against colonialism and neo-colonialism, dictatorship and oppression. The regimes responsible for this world order were unbending in their colonial, imperialist and oppressive agendas. The peoples of these oppressed countries had little choice but to take up arms against their tormentors. In South Africa too, the ANC’s ‘Gandhian’ (non-violent) élan gave way to opting for armed struggle when it became obvious that the apartheid regime was uncaring of outside or domestic protest and demands for justice. It answered all such peaceful manifestations with the knout and the mailed fist. The ANC’s armed struggle may not in itself have managed to overthrow the apartheid regime, but it was a factor, along with the former western supporters of South Africa’s racist policies because it suited their material interests turning away under the unrelenting pressure of moral opinion opposed to the affront to human equality and dignity that South Africa represented. Solidarity with successful or struggling movements for revolution and national liberation therefore came naturally to Mandela, and it goes to his credit that to the end of his life, he did not abandon his principles or the friends who had stood by his movement in its difficult years. It would be a mistake to substitute today’s political correctness out of context on a period that considered it legitimate to use force against regimes like the South African apartheid one. And despite today’s received mantra of seeking dialogue and reconciliation as the universal panacea for all conflicts, it is not inconceivable that a similar regime in future may require a dose of the same medicine Mandela tried it, but eventually abandoned it in favour of a much more powerful and ultimately irresistible weapon: moral authority. If his successors in South Africa desire some of Mandela’s shine to rub off on them, they have to seriously restore their now fading moral authority because of the widening poor-rich divide in their country, which still plays out along racial lines, with the non-whites still the have-nots.

Daily Times Editorial Dec 4, 2013

Appointment of superior courts’ judges The Senate on Monday engaged with the issue of the procedure for appointing superior courts’ judges. The Senators’ complaint, which echoed across the aisles, was that the procedure as laid down by the 18th Amendment to the Constitution had envisaged parliamentary oversight of the appointment of superior court judges in order to move away from the long standing convention that followed a non-transparent procedure limited to the judiciary, first and foremost, and at best the executive. Parliament previously had no role in the matter. Essentially the procedure as it now stands envisages nominees for appointment as superior courts’ judges to be put forward by the Judicial Commission headed by the Chief Justice of Pakistan and comprising, much to the Senators’ chagrin, six out of its nine members from the judiciary. These nominees are then vetted by a parliamentary committee consisting of four members each from the treasury and opposition benches from both houses. The parliamentary committee is afforded 14 days to record in writing its objection to any nominee by a three-fourths majority, failing which the nominee is deemed to have been appointed. Not only is this restrictive of the parliamentary committee’s ability to properly vet the nominees, the Senators say in practice none of the objections or reservations of the parliamentary committee are given any weight by the judicial commission. The Senators’ lament is that in practice the parliamentary committee has become ‘toothless’, and if it has no efficacy, either it should be abolished, or parliament should meet in joint session to enact a new law to correct the perceived imbalance between the judicial and parliamentary stakeholders in the appointments process. The 18th Amendment was the most comprehensive and ambitious undertaking to correct the anomalies that had accumulated in the supreme law of the land, largely because of the tinkering with it by military dictators over the decades. While the process of forging consensus in parliament on the amendment was a lengthy and exhausting exercise that yielded many good things, it failed to completely eliminate or repeal some clauses introduced by General Ziaul Haq to promote his so-called Islamisation agenda, a euphemism for consolidating his grip on power. Also, its proposed procedure for introducing parliamentary oversight for appointments to the superior judiciary did not sit well with the judiciary, which insisted on changes. The previous government acceded to the judiciary’s demands and enacted the 19th amendment to satisfy the judiciary. However, in practice, the Senators complain, parliamentary oversight exists more in the breach. While this may partly be ascribed to the weightage available to the judiciary in the judicial commission versus the parliamentary committee, in practice the procedure has not managed to introduce a credible oversight in the matter by parliament. With a new parliament elected in May 2013, the lawmakers seem inclined to revisit the appointments issue to see if parliamentary oversight can be improved, if necessary by enacting a new law to ensure that the judiciary does not become judge and jury in its own cause. The first casualty of the non-transparent procedure before the 18th amendment was often merit. That may still be the case or at least appear to be the case, until and unless the procedure is made more transparent, above board, and with the necessary checks and balances to ensure the members of the superior judiciary are appointed in a credible manner that enjoys the sanction of both the judiciary and parliament, and thereby the acceptability and respect members of the superior judiciary deserve. Along with a new parliament, a change is also imminent at the top of the judicial edifice, with incumbent Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry due to retire in a matter of days, and his successor Justice Tasadduq Hussain Gillani having expressed his desire to see a healthy and appropriate relationship and division of powers amongst the three pillars of the state, i.e. the judiciary, parliament and the executive. This trichotomy of power has come under great strain in recent years because of the perceived overweening and hyper interventionist role of the superior judiciary since its restoration in 2009, with liberal use of suo motu and contempt powers, which have at times rendered the superior judiciary controversial. Given the balanced views of Justice Gillani, it can be hoped that the era of hyper activism characteristic of the last five years will seamlessly give way to a more balanced role, keeping the time honoured principle of judicial restraint to the fore to ensure all state institutions function within their own purview, without conflict or friction.

Daily Times Editorial Dec 2, 2013

PPP’s future The 47th Foundation Day of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on Saturday, November 30th saw a public meeting of the party in Karachi addressed by Patron-in-chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and other leaders. In his address, Bilawal tried to rally the troops through a fighting speech that attempted to deal with some of the serious problems confronting the party and its future. The gist of his remarks revolved around the widespread public perception that the PPP had lost its way and faced a bleak future after the drubbing it received in the May 2013 elections, which saw it shrink from the only countrywide political party with roots and a presence in all the federating units to essentially a Sindh-based entity. Bilawal asserted that the PPP was very much alive and would prove before and by the next elections in 2018 the truth of this assertion. He went on to deny that the party had changed since it still connects people. Pakistan, Bilawal stated, is not the property of any “mullah” or “player”. He criticised the PML-N government for what he called the storm of inflation that has kicked in since it took office six months ago, which had made the life of the common man hell. His party, Bilawal said, would resist the privatisation plans of the government, which he characterised as “personalization” (a reference to alleged cronyism). Bilawal then trotted out the leit motif of the PPP: its leaders and workers’ sacrifices in the cause of democracy, in which he listed the fate of his grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his mother, Benazir Bhutto on top. He asserted that the PPP had always challenged the status quo and met his critics’ making fun of his indigenous language skills head on by asserting that his relationship with the people and the party’s workers transcended language issues. As a reflection of one aspect of the PPP’s trajectory over the years, two splinter groups of the PPP also held meetings to commemorate the founding day of the PPP. The first, the PPP-SB, held a meeting in the Lahore residence of Dr Mubashir Hassan, the locale of the original founding convention of the PPP in 1967. Dr Mubashir Hassan, one of the founders of the PPP and its first secretary general, pinned the blame for the dwindling fortunes of the PPP on its deviation from the ideas and programme of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and its original élan as a party of the workers and peasants. He criticized the PPP for falling prey to the zeit geist of our times, abandoning nationalisation and veering towards acceptance of privatisation. Dr Mubashir was sceptical of Bilawal’s claim that the PPP would make a comeback in the 2018 elections. The Naraaz (disaffected) group of the PPP led by Naheed Khan and Dr Safdar Abbassi also convened a separate commemorative meeting on the day. It is an interesting fact that both splinter groups, the PPP-SB and the Naraaz broke away from the mother party in the wake of assassinations of top leaders of the party, PPP-SB after Murtaza Bhutto’s and the Naraaz group after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination respectively. Forty seven years after a group of left wing intellectuals and workers met in 1967 to found the PPP as the party of change, the current state of the party raises more questions than answers. The PPP posited Islamic socialism as its creed, nationalized the commanding heights of the economy after coming to power in the wake of the Bangladesh debacle, carried out land reforms but failed to follow through on the logic of transformation of state and society, premised on the class struggle. As a result of its ‘hesitation’, it inadvertently allowed the reactionary and vested interests to mount a deadly counter-offensive, which cost both Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto their lives, the latter despite her best efforts to allay the establishment and propertied classes’ view of the PPP as a radical left wing party. How the Phoenix of the PPP can emerge from the ashes of the 2013 defeat and the demoralisation of its ranks and supporters is the forbidding challenge facing the next generation of the PPP’s leadership, first and foremost Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.