HE sadness that has weighed upon people's minds I following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto can Only JL deepen with the way her Pakistan People's Party has decided to elect its new leadership. The bigger truth, though, is that there is really nothing new or inspiring about the new men nowin charge of the party'. With Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Asif Ali Zardari taking over as the chairman and co-chairman of the party respectively, it is once more a dominance of dynastic politics rather than democracy that manifests itself. At the same time and in a very regrettable way, it shows up once again the power and influence that Pakistan's traditionally feudal society still exercises over the masses. By doing what it has done, the PPP has done little to convince anyone that democracy in Pakistan will benefit from the move.

No one can deny that the growth and perpetuation of dynastic politics in South Asia — in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka — have prevented the development of a full-fledged, vibrant democratic culture in the region. Indeed, when politicians have chosen to promote their families in the matter of succession at the top of the party or state leadership, they have clearly left the cause of pluralistic governance badly mauled. Much of the trauma that we associate with democracy in South Asia today is directly related to the inability or unwillingness of pre-eminent political leaders and their followers to understand that their constant emphases on democracy lose all meaning when they ignore or push aside that very democratic factor within their parties and instead choose to promote their kith and kin unabashedly for the future.

That chance has now sadly been lost Zardari, who will now rule the roost seeing that his son is young and needs to finish his education, and whose reputation is badly tainted, is not the man who can inaugurate democracy in Pakistan. Indeed, we will go further and say that dynastic politics runs contrary to the ideal of democracy. In the long run, the PPP has chosen a path that will neitherserve Pakistan, and definitely not democracy.

We believe a party which should have called for a postponement of the election date for the things to settle down after the tragedy has actually insisted on not shifting the date. We sense that it wants to hurry through the election to allow little time for the people to think about the succession or raise question about it as the party cashed in on sympathy votes. This is placingpolitical expediency over national interest.