Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteEvery other day and week, something crosses the Internet for or against but validating without official validation of any sort--not from governments or witnesses--a Musharraf-Bhutto meeting in Dubai. The latest Googled up, an Associated Press relay in the converging broadcasting-Internet news splattering realm: "Bhutto, Musharraf envoys reportedly in UAE for pact talks." [1]
It could be true, but neither side nor anyone else cares to admit or confirm it.
The Dawn newspaper said two close Musharraf aides were in Dubai "to make what is being termed here a last-ditch effort to strike a power-sharing deal." Geo television reported that talks had resumed.
Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, confirmed Tuesday that she had traveled from London to Dubai, but added, "Reports that a government delegation is meeting (Benazir) Bhutto or has met her, they are not correct." [1]
If it's in the newspaper or on the Internet (or in Jim's blog), must it be true?
Harvard girl Benazir Bhutto has reportedly announced intentions to return to Pakistan about now, the latter half of 2007, and well she may despite a raft of graft charges forming a more or less permanent cloud over her head.
On Tuesday, August 5, 2003, a Swiss investigating judge, Daniel Devaud, found and sentenced former Prime Minister Bhutto and her husband, Asif Zardari, on charges of money laundering to the tune of 20 million Swiss francs. Although reporter Eric Margolis provided perspective on Bhutto's predicament in 1999 [2] and "deny all" remained her modus operandi through the 2003 verdict, there comes a point in the politics of all open societies where some of the mud unfortunately sticks.
In his 1999 piece, "Benazir Bhutto: Damsel in Distress", Margolis noted, "Benazir Bhutto is beautiful, fascinating, a damsel in deep, deep distress, though through it one also sees occasional flashes of the imperious nature that marked the Bhuttos, Pakistan's foremost great feudal landowners."
That's a note flimsier than anything that may or may not have transpired in the various courts feeding off the injured Bhutto reputation, but I'm going to buy it, for I know intuitively, writer to writer, that 1) neither Margolis nor I have any other agenda than reflection on observations in service to goodness and truth; 2) that childhood stories involving family honor and lore stick, especially when they have to do with social identity, class, and privilege; and 3) governing as if born to it and providing leadership to a people are two very different things, and in my most humble opinion, Benazir Bhutto had been born to it.
Any Islamic fundamentalist, much less militant fighter, worth his salt would note the reason that only Allah, and peace be upon him, may provide law is that among men who produce law for themselves corruption becomes rife. In fact, in confronting the ethics of open and secular societies that guaranty freedom of religion as a matter of personal decision and practice, the notion of representatives refraining from certain behaviors while in office--start with self-aggrandizement, personal entrichment, and nepotism--is implicit.
All over the world, we're looking for a few nearly irreproachable politicians, but as they're all human, that's nearly impossible; nonetheless, democracies in action differentiate over time between those who vigorously serve their people and those who make a spectacle of serving themselves.
Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has given himself the daunting challenge of producing for Pakistan a survivable democratic and modern state--culturally, socially, technologically--that at the same time secures Islam in such a way as to support peace, piety, and prayer in the mosques while discouraging militancy, especially that founded in the same "born to rule" mentality so familiar to the secular aristocracy.
That's a hard thing to do without reformation in the religion itself, but as much has been done elsewhere, Turkey first and foremost.
For Musharraf, as political an animal as any but very much also a dutiful son of the middle class and one who has never been mired in venal corruption scandals, tackling that goal makes for just another punishing day in the office, may a just God and an appreciative humanity bless him.
1. "Bhutto, Musharraf envoys reportedly in UAE for pact talks." WSVN-TV, September 4, 2007.
2. "Benazir Bhutto." Wikipedia, as experienced September 6, 2007 at 10:10 a.m. EDT.
3. "Swiss judge convicts Bhutto." BBC News, August 5, 2003.
4. Margolis, Eric. "Benazir Bhutto: Damsel in Distress." The Wisdom Fund, October 7, 1999.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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