The scion of the country’s leading political dynasty, emerging from the shadow of his mother and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto seven years after she was assassinated, has vowed to resurrect her party’s flagging fortunes.
In the first interview since his political “coming out” at a weekend gathering of hundreds of thousands of supporters, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari told Reuters that he planned a series of rallies in a challenge to embattled prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
“Like any politician, like the head of any political party, we are looking to expand our vote bank, make gains, gain more seats,” the 26-year-old said in his hometown of Naudero late on Wednesday.
“And therefore I will be looking to do that in every way possible,” said Bhutto.
His Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) ruled the country from 2008 to 2013, but it became tarnished by a series of confrontations with the powerful Supreme Court over corruption scandals.
After people became disillusioned with its image and policies, it was voted out in a landmark election last year.
The emergence of Bilawal as an opposition leader comes at an opportune time for the PPP and is likely to be a worry for Prime Minister Nawaz.
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The incumbent’s authority has been shaken by weeks of anti-government protests led by former cricket star Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri, a firebrand cleric.
Convincing people he is a force to be reckoned with, however, will be an uphill task for Bhutto, whose youth may prevent him from being taken seriously beyond the PPP’s stronghold in Sindh.
“These political orphans and puppets would want us to be a dictatorship again,” he said, referring to Imran and Qadri and their protests.
“But Pakistan is over that. We are a democracy. We have had a civilian transfer of power.”
Young vote bank
Bilawal, whose age did not allow him to contest the 2008 elections, said he would rely on Pakistan’s young population for support and make fighting poverty his central agenda.
“Sixty per cent of the population of Pakistan is young… and of course I, being 26, I think can relate to them more than any other Pakistani political leader can,” he said.
“For me, serving the people… is about poverty alleviation.”
As well as his youth, Bilawal can draw on a name more evocative than any other in Pakistan.
His family’s story is as torrid as the country’s; his mother Benazir was assassinated at an election campaign rally in 2007, and his grandfather was hanged by a military dictator in 1979.
Benazir’s killer has never been caught, and a UN inquiry found that Pakistani authorities had failed to protect her or properly investigate her death.
Benazir remains a powerful symbol and people often refer to her as a martyr.
Tough on India
While the young Bhutto’s remarks about the poor are consistent with the PPP’s traditional position, he is far more hawkish than his party has been on the issue of Pakistan’s longstanding rivalry with India.
The PPP’s five years in power were marked by a warming in ties between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
In recent weeks, armed forces from Pakistan and India have engaged in their worst clashes in decades in the disputed region of Kashmir.
“The United Nations Security Council, the people of Pakistan, Pakistan as a country and the people of Kashmir all agree on what the way forward is; it’s only India that keeps making excuses and sabotaging peace,” Bilawal said.
“My generation, our generation on both sides of the border won’t put up with this,” he added, in surprisingly strong comments.
Bilawal has been an outspoken critic of the hardline Taliban movement, which threatened his party with attack during the run-up to the 2008 election.
After his mother was killed, her widower, Asif Ali Zardari, returned from self-imposed exile to successfully contest the election. He remains co-chair of the PPP along with his son.
Bilawal said the PPP was ultimately responsible for a major military operation against the Taliban launched in North Waziristan in July, and said Nawaz Sharif, who was in favour of peace talks with the militants, had been reluctant to give the go-ahead.
“It only happened because of the political pressure mounted by the PPP and our fierce, vocal and brave opposition,” Bilawal said.
“The Nawaz Sharif government was reluctant and the peace process was a consensus built among the right-wing parties that dominate discourse in Pakistan. We took it upon ourselves to go against this policy of appeasement.”
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