It is well known that politicians can be opportunistic on current events in order to further their own agenda, we need only to look at the actions of the Republican party the last eight years to confirm these stereotypes.

When one is capitalizing on the death of one’s parent, it seems to reach a whole new level of wrong.  This is how the “election?”(if that can be the right word) of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari as the leader of the Pakistan People’s Party strikes me.

For months it seemed, and was “reported” by the major media outlets that the true desire of the Bhutto campaign was over democratic principles that Musharraf was wrongly curtailing because of imagined dangers to the stability of the country, and how much she truly cared about Pakistan.

With the party now being lead, ceremonially or not, by a 19 year old kid not even graduated from college yet, we have a glimpse of what the Bhutto campaign was really about - power.  Pure, simple, unadulterated, thirst for power.

The opportunity was seen with the country of Pakistan heading ever closer to chaos, and the unpopularity of Musharraf who was seen as doing too much of what the West wanted, and internationally not seen as doing enough.  So when he tried to relieve some of that pressure by letting back in a Prime Minister who was expelled (twice) on corruption charges, Bhutto seized the moment to push her own agenda.

Even when she knew that the people who disliked Musharraf for being too lenient would not exactly find the idea of a woman in charge particularly appealing she came anyway.  When asked to postpone so that safety protocols could be determined she insisted on going home immediately.

Even when a bomb went off at a rally early in her “triumphant” return, she still would go into the midst of the people, seemingly without care, that she was making it that much easier for those who wished to do her harm to get the opportunity to do so.

Then we have her “supposed” letters to friends to be released, “if she were to be killed” and putting the blame on Musharraf rather than the people who carried out the act.  This would be like a quarterback blaming the referees for a late hit rather than the linebacker who done it.

The party that presumably had the “best interests” of Pakistan by desiring to bring democracy to the unstable country seems to be merely use the rhetoric when it suits them and then carry on with their true agenda.  Dynasties are nothing new, and apparently people find solace in them.  What needs to be remembered is that competence and integrity need to matter as well, the experiences of the Bush Dynasty should be evidence of the dangers of Bloodline Politics.