The Legacy Goes On!

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has been feeling more than neglected. The grand show staged by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, vice president, Maryam Nawaz to re-celebrate the Pakistan version of her son’s wedding has taken others off the news screens. This affair followed so soon after prime minister Imran Khan inaugurated Karachi’s first ever public transport project, when PPP has ruled since Sindh for more than a dozen years.

Bilawal is also at loss to understand why some are upset that his minions like Sindh information minister Saeed Ghani do errands like opening his water bottles. Lately, he has been heard muttering to himself, ‘tell me, then what are slaves for’.

It was under such attention deprivation that he hallucinated that NBC News is interviewing him. The NBC presenter that happens, however, is NBC News for Universal Kids host Savannah Sellers.

Sellers calls and introduces herself that her research staff Googled seeking an innocent people to interview, found that (now retired) chief justice of Pakistan Saqib Nisar had labelled him innocent in a money laundering case where his father is the principal accused.

“Savannah, you have reached the right person. I am 33 but I am so innocent that I have to ask one of my slaves to open water bottles for me… I’ve never worked in life… I am so innocent…”

“Could I call you Bill?”

“Nah, you address me as Chairman Bhutto-Zardari… and when I appear on your screen, I should look sitting much higher than you.”

“Ah, a mouthful though. Our newscast is intended to engage 6 to 11-year-olds in current events. So, I am asking that Imran Khan, your president, did not accept President Biden’s invitation to the virtual Summit for Democracy…”

“Savannah, first thing, Imran Khan is prime minister and not president. It is my father, Asif Zardari who was president. Unlike me, Imran Khan has no politics in his genes. Look at me… in fact, every morning when I wake up, and wait for a minion to serve me breakfast in bed, I look up myself in the bedside mirror and say, ‘your grandfather was prime minister, your mother was going for a third turn as prime minister, and your father was president. I have pedigree, which he lacks.

“Leadership and foreign policy acumen should best be inherited. My paternal grandfather, Hakim Ali Zardari, mostly lived in Normandy in our Manoir de la Reine Blanche -- the 16th-century royal chateau. This is another source of deeper knowledge … managing your own historic overseas estates!

“True leadership is sexually transmitted. Like you had the Bushes, father and son…

“Savannah, I want all American kids to know that the Bhutto genetic line are true to America. For example, in 2008, America was hesitant about droning Pakistan. My father, President Zardari told then‐CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden in New York that killing Pakistanis… the collateral damage worries you, not me.

“Our party knows statecraft. During this drone thing, the one from whom dogs should learn loyalty, my father’s appointed prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, told then ambassador Anne Patterson, to go ahead with Predator attacks, assuring her that we will protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it. Let me share this too. In June 2009, to help avoid any anti-Americanism in the country, President Zardari advised then-U.S. National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones to put drones in Pakistan's hands so we would own the collateral damage. This is our depth of foreign policy!

“We have deep American roots. My father owns U.S. real estate, like The Belaire at 524 East 72nd Street, New York. Naturally, we have a better understanding of American interests. If I were prime minister, I would have thanked President Biden a million times for the invite and attended.

“My father, President Zardari is deeply beholden to America since the National Reconciliation Ordinance brokered by [secretary of state] Condi Rice brought him to power.

“My sainted mother Benazir Bhutto understood Washington more than Washington understood her. It was her White House, Congress and foreign policy establishment connections that helped propel her into power in Pakistan. She was a frequent flyer to Washington. Her American Christmas card list, excluding people in government and Congress, was up to 375 names. She convinced the Reagan administration that the U.S. would be better off with her in power. In November 1988, she failed winning plurality, but Reagan prevailed to get her the job! Regrettably, she was murdered, and my father lost a reliable instrument of siphoning off Pakistan’s treasury.

Someone has forwarded this quote for some American author, Tony Robbins that it's not what we do occasionally that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently. My father is consistent in siphoning off the country’s assets and successfully.”