The lady needs help, badly
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “Schizophrenia” is a term used by psychiatrists for a group of severe mental disorders that generally have in common disturbances of feeling, thought and relations to the outside world. Various theories of the origin of schizophrenic disorder have centered on anatomical, biochemical, psychological, social, genetic and environmental causes -— the reaction resulting from faulty adjustments to a variety of underlying conditions that may be either physical or psychological, or both. The “hebephrenic type” is characterized mainly by shallow and inappropriate emotional responses, foolish or bizarre behaviour, false beliefs (delusions) and false perceptions (hallucinations) while the “paranoid type” is characterized primarily by unrealistic, illogical thinking, with alternate delusions of persecution or of grandeur, and is often accompanied by hallucinations. “Megalomania” is an element of paranoia, this affliction seems to be fairly common in the Bhutto family.
Ms Benazir’s Dr. Strangelove-type behaviour pattern, characterized by inflections of pitch in speech pattern, her facial expressions and general demeanour as she launches herself into a fantasy world of “conspiracies” involving anybody who runs afoul of her is alarming. A western diplomat described a recent Press Conference as “Benazir in Cuckoo-land”. There are mitigating circumstances for her marked schizophrenic behaviour. For the last 30 years of her life, she has undergone one trauma after the other, starting with her late father’s atrocious behaviour towards her mother, Nusrat Bhutto, a confirmed manic-depressive who was treated by the late Dr Shadi Khan in the “Mother and Child Clinic” in Karachi in 1973 because of a nervous breakdown on her husband’s continuing affair with Ms Husna Ahad, a lady who later became her father’s third (and most influential) wife. This was a father whom Ms Benazir adored and who in turn doted on her almost in exclusion to his other children. The Gen Zia midnight coup of July 5, 1977 was another shock in her collection of mental landmarks, the Bhutto family was herded into the middle of the lawn of the PM’s House in Rawalpindi until it was totally secured. Those in the immediate charge of the operations well remember the then young woman plaintively inquiring whether “they would all be killed”. The next horrific event of traumatic shock must certainly be the unfortunate hanging of her father in 1979, an event that would unsettle much more resilient mortals. Her periods of imprisonment, most of it in solitary, was followed by the drugs-related mysterious death of her youngest brother, Shahnawaz purportedly at the hands of his Afghan wife in the early 80s. When her government was dismissed in August 1990 by Presidential fiat, she must have had another shock but probably she was braced for it because she always expected it from the forbidding presence of President Ghulam Ishaq. Her brother Murtaza’s violent death at the hands of her police in an “encounter” must have also been a profound shock, worse was to follow as the crowds that used to idolize her in Larkana spontaneously blamed her husband for her brother’s murder and refused to allow her or her close political aides near his funeral. Her mother, is in a state of advanced dementia, having lost all three grown males of her immediate family who can blame her ? Coupled with the constant reports, true or false, about her husband’s peccadilloes, the almost universal belief that he ordered her brother’s murder, must have been doubly traumatic. It was fairly common knowledge that brother and husband hated each other.
By her own admission Ms Benazir says she was shocked by President Leghari’s action in dismissing the National Assembly (NA) and thus her government. For the third time a midnight knock announced the fall of a Bhutto from absolute power, for the third time since 1979 she was on the receiving end. Even before this latest watershed, her behaviour has been bordering on the irrational. The pattern of her accusations is revealing, she adopts a “horses for courses” method, laying the blame on whosoever or whatever the immediate audience is most likely to accept, eg. (1) for an ethnic Sindhi audience her target for her brother’s death are rogue “Punjabi” elements in the police and “the agencies” (2) for a time she even implied that President Leghari and the Army was to blame for the murder, after a hiatus of almost 40 days, she is having another go at the President (3) for CNN and BBC, i.e. western audiences she blames “Islamist” forces (referring to the September 1995 coup attempt) who have somehow got “hold” of the President, whenever she can she raises the spectre of nuclear expertise in fundamentalist hands (4) she absolves the Army of anything to do with her government’s demise publicly while privately she rails against the military hierarchy, attacking them by proxy of the ISI, which is mostly officered by the Army (5) for the benefit of her party colleagues, rank and file, she dubs President Leghari as “Brutus”. Speaking to CNN’s Anita Pratap (and for the benefit of a western audience), she claimed that 130 million people elected her and she, she alone, elected Leghari. Ms Benazir usually takes quite a lot of liberties with actual facts, the actual fact being that 7.6 million people voted for her as compared to 8.5 million for Mian Nawaz Sharif, about 20 million actually went to the polls. This translates into 63% of the people i.e. 12.5 million voted against her, it was with the help of other political parties including the MQM, whom she mercilessly persecuted thereafter, that the honourable man that the PPP put forward was elected as President. As regards the reference to Brutus, Shakespeare would have been hard put to duplicate the virtuoso non-ending performance given by “Benazir Antony” on Prime Time TV when people came to condole her brother’s murder. Even Marc Antony would have been amazed at the cold-blooded use of emotions for political purpose, though one daresays in this case she had a more personal motive, to deflect widespread suspicion from her husband. On the subject of Antony and his mistress Cleopatra, an exasperated Augustus Caesar, who held the western portion of the Roman Empire with Antony ruling the Eastern half said, “Marc Antony, loving Rome and beloved of Romans, says that all that is his belongs to Rome and then gives away to his mistress (Cleopatra) all (the Eastern Empire) that is not his to give”, or words to that effect. And all for the sake of love ! Any parallels with our ex-PM handing over the keys of Pakistan’s treasury to her beloved spouse ?
Ms Benazir would do well to climb back to ground zero of both reality and sanity. Her government fell, viz (1) because it was thoroughly corrupt (2) gross economic and financial mismanagement that has led to a stunning price increase of utilities and items of daily use (3) coercing and disparaging of the superior judiciary amounting to contempt (4) criminal misuse of Constitutional authority vested in her as PM in undermining /destabilizing duly elected provincial governments (5) criminal misconduct across the board including widespread invasion of privacy, by electronic eavesdropping and wiretapping even of her own ministers and friends (6) the blatant attempt to cover-up Murtaza’s murder, etc, among a host of other charges. She speaks of constitutional rule and democracy, can she name any tenet of the Constitution and/or democracy that she did not violate — and continues to do so with impunity. To imply that the superior courts have another set of rules for a PM from Sindh as opposed to one from Punjab is calumny. Punjabis supporting her deserve better than the real venom she seems to carry in her heart for them. Ms Benazir should also kindly explain which constitution in the world allows a spouse, even in a monarchy, to assume virtual dictatorial powers even exceeding that of hers. Asif Zardari was not running a government within a government, he was running the country in all but name. His democratic and financial credentials were both rather modest before he married the golden goose. Why not make public the tax records, wealth and income tax, of both his father and himself from 1985 onwards i.e. if he was registered as a tax-payer till 1990. He was never more than moderately affluent, as much as the early canard that did not gell of his being a graduate of the London School of Economics (LSE). This was later claimed to be London School Certificate (LSC), according to knowledgeable sources he has never cleared any educational examination in his life.
Ms Bhutto certainly does not want elections to be held in 90 days. Whatever fantasy world she may live in she is aware of the public reaction where mass dancing in the streets and distribution of sweets greeted her downfall. Can she go up against sister-in-law Ghinwa Bhutto in either Lyari or Larkana? Can she even go there without massive protection? These are still safe “Bhutto” seats, but unfortunately for her the Sindhi masses now consider Ghinwa and her children the real inheritors of the Bhutto heritage. Trounced by almost a million votes in the General Elections in 1993, had it not been for manipulation on a massive scale by the likes of Lt Gens Farrukh (then Chief of General Staff) and Javed Ashraf Qazi (then DG ISI), she could never have come to power. An IBM-computer sleight of hand (the famous Election Cell) saw at least 15 urban-rural seats change from the PML (N) alliance to PPP after midnight, not to speak of the 14 seats “gifted” to her in Karachi/Hyderabad because of the forced MQM boycott of the NA elections. Contrary to her public stance, she will sow everything in her power to delay the electoral process, firstly to discredit the President’s motives and secondly to try and regain the sympathy vote if her husband is successfully prosecuted for her brother’s murder. Having practiced graveyard politics over the bodies of three male Bhutto members successfully over the past decade or so, what does one more expendable male matter to her — and he is not even a Bhutto! The present conditions in Pakistan being what they are, barring the votes he loses to Imran Khan’s Tehrik-e-Insaf, Mian Nawaz Sharif will most probably win in a near landslide.
People should not count the PPP just out as yet, it has very fine people who will stand by her despite the odds, among them Aftab Sherpao, Gen Babar, Aitzaz Ahsan, Shah Mahmud Qureshi, Syed Qaim Ali Shah, etc. Instead of pandering to their Leaderene’s wishes blindly, they should function as a political party should, moderating down her histrionics. Unfortunately advice from “doves” is taken by her as criticism meant to be stamped upon. The constant flattery from “hawks” gives her the motivation for confrontation on all issues. If Ms Benazir is not suffering from schizophrenia and megalomania then she is certainly acting like she is. If Pakistan really does possess the nuclear option, her being the authority to sanction its use is a scary thought. Her colleagues must see that she gets help and soon, there are too many flashes of Dr. Strangelove in her behaviour. She is a national leader with a vast following and if she is really afflicted, it would not be fair to the masses, to democracy and to the country to have such a disturbed woman’s finger hovering near the nuclear trigger.
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