YESTERDAY was the fifth anniversary of the assassination in Pakistan of Benazhir Bhutto who was campaigning for election as prime minister of the country for a third time. At a rally held close to her tomb yesterday her son Bilawal Bhutto Zardar launched his political career as a future leader of the Pakistan People's Party; now 24 years old and a graduate of Oxford University he cannot yet take part in an election but it is already clear that he will soon carry the hopes of the party that his grandfather founded in 1947 and led until he was hanged by a military government in 1979. However many Bhutto's are killed, even more will emerge Bilawal Bhutto said defiantly.
Pakistan politics are rotten to the core and two previous generations of Bhuttos have been found guilty of corruption. Will the prospective new leader of a long-established and powerful party prove to be any different, however good his initial intentions? Another new political leader is the former Pakistan cricket captain Imran Khan who has founded the Movement for Justice party and calls for new policies such as cutting all foreign government aid as a means of ending corruption and holding negotiations with the Taliban.
Pakistan and the Western powers that are obliged to work with it need a clean sweep of old ways but will find that difficult to achieve.
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