SocraticGadfly: Nepotism among Bhutto assassination fallout

December 29, 2007

Nepotism among Bhutto assassination fallout

Benazir Bhutto’s 19-year-old son, Bilawal, reportedly will be named the new head of the Pakistan People's Party. Uhh, in a democracy, you’d actually have a caucus of party leaders or something, even in an emergency like this, and you certainly wouldn’t give the reins to a 19-year-old kid.

That’s even worse than Rajiv Ghandi being named his mom’s successor as head of the Congress Party in India.

2 comments:

Dionysus said...

yep, that was the extent of her belief in 'democracy' - to run a political party as a monarchy or family business and then cry foul about democracy!

Anonymous said...

I totally agree - we've seen this same phenomena in other countries that pretend to be anything but monarchies! Had she been Prime Minister at the time of her death, would Pakistan be elevating her son to be the new PM? Maybe. On the other hand, people have been attracted to dynasties for centuries, which is probably why monarchies hung on for as long as they did. And we have our own in the US (consider the people who will elect a Kennedy based on the name), although most of them at least fail to publicly "will" their posts to children. And I'm not sure what you all Moynihan's essential "willing" of his Senate seat to a woman who didn't even live in New York - except that New Yorkers happily went along for the ride.