Pakistan

As I'm sure you all know, Pakistan is in a pretty fucked-up state right now; well, yeah, it's always in a fucked-up state, but especially now. That was due, of course, to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto last week. Besides losing one of the few women in world politics who were of MILF-status (sorry, I found Ms. Bhutto a very attractive woman, and am saddened at her passing for that alone), there are many who feel that Pakistan took a major blow in terms of moving forward to a democracy, from a dictatorship.

But I've been reading a few articles (this one, in particular from the Post, is very good and addresses some of my thoughts) and came away with one thing. As supportive of democracy as the Pakistan People's Party (Bhutto's party) allegedly is, is it really? The PPP was founded by Bhutto's father. He met a violent end, and that's when it was taken over by his daughter, Benazir. She won a few elections for prime minister, and her terms were fraught with reports of corruption. She also met a violent end, and once again, an heir (this time, her son) is taking over the party upon the completion of his studies at Oxford. In the meantime, his father and Benazir's husband (known as "Mr. Ten Percent" because of his skimming off the top of Pakistan government contracts) is the interim head of the PPP.

So for a party that espouses democracy (again, in contrast to the dictatorship of Musharraf), they're awfully keen in ensuring that one of their own runs things and that all with the Bhutto family name live comfortably. It's unnerving how similiar that is to our own country; recall that in prior blog posts, I pointed out the irony of a possible Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton 20-30 year span of holding the American presidency. One family has the power. Is that really that much better than a dictatorship? It certainly isn't democratic, at least not from where I sit.