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Cousin questions Bilawal succession

LONDON: The simmering tension in the Bhutto family over the nomination of 19-year-old Bilawal to succeed his mother as the head of the Pakistan People’s Party has come out into the open with his cousin Fatima Bhutto launching a public attack describing his appointment as an attempt to turn the party into a “family business, like an antique shop”.

Ms. Bhutto (25), is the daughter of Benazir Bhutto’s brother, Murtaza, who was killed in a mysterious shoot-out in Karachi in 1996 when Benazir was Prime Minister. Although an outspoken critic of her aunt, she had kept a low profile after her assassination, joining the public show of family unity.

Barely two weeks later, however, Ms. Bhutto on Saturday broke her silence in an interview with The Times. Without staking her own claim to be the legitimate heir, she said the issue was Bilawal’s suitability to lead the party at such a young age and when he was still a student at Oxford.

Ms. Bhutto said she doubted whether PPP workers believed that “on whomever you put the Bhutto name can lead”. Accusing a “coterie” within the PPP of trying to exploit Benazir’s murder for their own ends, she said: “They seem to be a party in a hurry and they seem to be desperate to cash in on her blood. There was a certain coterie around her that benefited richly from her government and they plan, it seems, to benefit richly from her death as well,” she said.

Ms. Bhutto, who is a journalist and is known to nurse political ambitions of her own, said that the idea that only a Bhutto could lead the PPP was a “dangerous one”.

Her attack came days after Benazir’s septuagenarian uncle, Mumtaz Bhutto, questioned the succession saying that Bilawal was not a Bhutto, but a Zardari.

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