When Fatima Bhutto heard that her estranged aunt had been assassinated she put aside decades of family feuding to mourn with her relatives at the ancestral home in Pakistan.

Three days later, when Benazir Bhutto’s 19-year-old son, Bilawal, was anointed head of the Pakistan People’s Party, Fatima maintained a respectful silence, despite whispers that she was the real Bhutto heir.

But now, two weeks on, she has broken that silence to launch a blistering attack on her cousin’s appointment, accusing those around him of perpetuating dynastic politics and trying to cash in on his mother’s blood.

In an interview with The Times – her first with the Western media since Benazir’s death – the 25-year-old newspaper columnist also rejected her own claim to the Bhutto legacy, calling for a new era of politics based on platforms rather than personalities.

Q&A: the murder of Benazir Bhutto

Times South Asia Correspondent asks who had most to gain from killing the Pakistan People's Party leader

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“That’s the problem – it’s a field that’s held hostage by so few and it’s become in a sense the family business, like an antique shop, where it’s just ‘So and So and Sons’ and then grandsons and great grandsons. It just gets handed down,” she said.

“The idea that it has to be a Bhutto, I think, is a dangerous one. It doesn’t benefit Pakistan. It doesn’t benefit a party that’s supposed to be run on democratic lines and it doesn’t benefit us as citizens if we think only about personalities and not about platforms.” At a news conference in London this week, Bilawal denied that the party had been handed to him “like some piece of family furniture”.

Fatima’s remarks are unlikely to dent his support, but they reflect the concerns of many about his party’s democratic credentials ahead of parliamentary elections on February 18. And while she says her doors are “always open” to Bilawal and his sisters, her criticism is almost certain to dash hopes of a family reunion and carry the epic feud into the next generation.

“We were there for those three days of mourning,” she said. “So it’s up to them now.” Fatima’s father was Murtaza Bhutto, Benazir’s younger brother and the eldest son of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was Pakistan’s first populist Prime Minister until he was deposed in a coup in 1977 and executed.

Murtaza led a resistance movement from Afghanistan, returning to Pakistan to challenge Benazir’s leadership of the PPP. He was killed in a police shootout in Karachi in 1996, while she was Prime Minister. Murtaza’s Lebanese-Syrian wife, Ghinwa, has always blamed Benazir and has run a splinter faction of the PPP ever since. Benazir, meanwhile, derided Ghinwa as a “belly dancer” and disputed her inheritance of the family homes in Karachi and Larkana. “It was not a pleasant relationship we had at all,” Fatima said.

The PPP says that Benazir left a will appointing her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, as party chief and that he stepped down in favour of Bilawal, a history student at Oxford. Bilawal added “Bhutto” to his surname and said his father would run the party until he completed his studies. Mumtaz Bhutto, leader of the 700,000-strong Bhutto tribe, has disputed that, saying Bilawal’s name change did not make him a “real Bhutto”.

Fatima said that neither she nor her 17-year-old brother were the rightful heirs – even though they are the offspring of the male line. The issue, she said, was whether Bilawal was a suitable choice, given that by law he must wait another 6 years to run for Parliament – and 16 years to stand for Prime Minister. “Ultimately the party workers believe that nobody can head the party but a Bhutto, but I don’t think the workers believe that on whomever you put the Bhutto name can lead,” 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.”

Fatima, like Mr Zardari, rejected the Government’s claim that Islamist militants were behind Benazir’s assassination, but she also questioned Mr Zardari’s motives. “I think at some point the will should be made public, if indeed there was one,” she said.

The parallels between Fatima and her aunt are striking: Benazir studied at Harvard and Oxford before returning to Pakistan and taking over the PPP aged 24. Fatima returned to Pakistan two years ago after completing a BA in Middle Eastern studies at Columbia University and an MA in South Asian government and politics at SOAS in London.

Fatima has also published a book of poetry aged 15 and another on the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir.

So far, she has resisted the urge to run for Parliament, confining herself to campaigning for her mother and writing her weekly columns. She admits, though, that politics is in her blood. “If there was an opportunity for new faces to come up and new voices to be heard and if I could be of service in some way, I wouldn’t say no,” she said. “But I’m not interested in being a symbol for anyone.”

Voice of dissent

“[Benazir] Bhutto’s political posturing is sheer pantomime . . . By supporting Ms Bhutto, who talks of democracy while asking to be brought to power by a military dictator, the only thing that will be accomplished is the death of the nascent secular democratic movement in my country
Opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times November 14, 2007

I never agreed with her politics. I never did. I never agreed with those she kept around her, the political opportunists, hangers-on, them. They repulsed me. I never agreed with her version of events. Never. But in death perhaps, there is a moment to call for calm. To say enough. We have had enough. We cannot, and will not, take any more madness
Column in The News, Pakistan December 30, 2007

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