Fatima Bhutto Blasts Imran Khan

By Margherita Stancati

Aamir Qureshi/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Imran Khan at a book launch in Islamabad, Pakistan on Jan. 8.

There was a short-lived rumor last month that Fatima Bhutto was flirting with the idea of joining Imran Khan’s opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party.

Speaking at the Jaipur Literature Festival on Sunday, she made it clear this was unlikely to happen. Ever.

Ms. Bhutto accused Mr. Khan of defending the legacy of former dictator Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, who came to power in the late 1970s after overthrowing Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Fatima’s grandfather and the founder of the country’s ruling Pakistan People’s Party. She also mentioned Mr. Khan’s support for a 2002 referendum allowing Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who had come to power with a coup a few years earlier, to extend his term.“He has an incredible coziness not with the military but with dictatorship,” Ms. Bhutto said of Mr. Khan, a cricket legend-turned-politician who has been billing himself as the face of change in Pakistan.

That’s not where it ended. In what appeared to be a well-rehearsed argument to debunk the political credibility of the former cricket captain, Ms. Bhutto went on to list more reasons why she opposed his political foray.

“As a woman I worry very much about Imran’s politics,” said Ms. Bhutto. She spoke of his opposition to amending a 2006 woman’s bill in favor of victims of rape. She also questioned Mr. Khan’s commitment to secularism and to defending minorities.

“Is he a savior? No, I don’t think so,” said Ms. Bhutto during a Pakistan-focused session at the literary festival.

“Well, that’s the end of Imran Khan,” said news anchor Karan Thapar, who moderated the panel.

Mr. Khan’s political weight, long dismissed as irrelevant, started to gain new relevance in recent months.

Although he started his party more than 15 years ago, only now is it starting to gain traction. On Christmas Day, over 100,000 people turned up to his rally in Karachi, where he vowed to stand up to the U.S. and to fight corruption. 

In October, he drew an even larger crowd in Lahore, leaving some wondering whether the next general elections, slated for 2013, may “mark the moment that PTI went from being ridiculous to respectable in the mainstream,” as an article in The Caravan magazine recently noted.

Mike Clarke/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Fatima Bhutto at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong on March 3, 2008.

At the literary festival, where Ms. Bhutto shared a stage with the Pakistani-American historian Ayesha Jalal, the tone was one of disillusionment with Pakistan’s political class. Ms. Bhutto spoke of the “gulf” that exists between the people in power and the rest of the country, saying that food scarcity – not squabbles between institutions –  is the bigger worry for most people.

Despite her political lineage (another former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, was her aunt), Ms. Bhutto has long eschewed direct involvement in national politics. Best known as a writer and a journalist, Ms. Bhutto hasn’t spared members of her family in her political critiques. Her “Songs of Blood and Swords,” a 2010 memoir centered on the Bhutto dynasty, exposedfeuding in her family and was damning of her late aunt.

Spokespersons of Mr. Khan’s PTI party did not respond to emailed requests for comment. Attempts to reach Mr. Khan or his spokespersons by phone were unsuccessful.

You can follow Margherita and India Real Time on Twitter @margheritamvs and@indiarealtime.

Posted in: PTI