Poor 19 year old !

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Stephen Bates
Tuesday January 8, 2008
Guardian Unlimited


When he went down from Oxford five weeks ago for the Christmas holidays, Bilawal Bhutto was just another undergraduate freshman, with friends, as students will, posting his picture at a Halloween party on Facebook.
Today, on his return to Britain, the chairman of the Pakistan People's Party was mobbed by journalists and camera crews at a heaving London press conference, subjected to the ineffable sneers of Jeremy Paxman, and found himself answering questions about his and his country's future with the best composure and self-assurance that a 19 year old could muster.

In the last fortnight he has been catapulted from obscurity and a winter holiday in Dubai to become proclaimed leader of his murdered mother's party and, inevitably, a key player in the future of Pakistan, a country he hardly knows at first hand and whose languages he can scarcely speak.
In such dynastic politics, the son also rises.

What a difference an assassination makes to the fate of individuals, as well as countries. On the day that his mother, Benazir, might in other circumstances have been elected to government in Pakistan, her son and anointed political heir emerged blinking into the London limelight to face a barrage of cameras, rattling like machine-gun fire every time he lifted his head.

"I am a bit nervous," he confided and "OK, wow", when confronted by a complicated three-part question from the BBC's diplomatic correspondent. It was perhaps a fusion of the cultures of his old life and his life in prospect: a wood-panelled room weakly imitating an Oxford common room, filled with raucous journalists, packed tighter than a Lahore street market.

The Gore Hotel in Kensington may not have seen anything like it since Dame Nellie Melba was a guest, and almost certainly not even then.

In the circumstances, the young man did well.

Chaperoned by Pakistani loyalists and shepherded by Simon Walker, a friend of his mother's from her Oxford Union days, formally the Queen's press officer and now a panjandrum in the City, Bilawal sat impassive, confronting the scrum.

"He's not entering public life or campaigning, he's entitled to some privacy, as has been given to other children of public figures," shouted Walker above the hubbub.

Bilawal announced modestly: "I was called and I have stepped up." He added: "Why have I become chairman of the Pakistan People's party, founded by my grandfather 40 years ago? The answer to this question is because it was recognised at this moment in crisis the party needed a close association with my mother through the bloodline.

"Also, it was important to give hope to the new generation of Pakistanis who are looking not just to these elections but beyond.

"Politics is also in my blood. Although I admit that my experience to date is limited, I intend to learn ... unless I can finish my education and develop enough maturity, I recognise that I will never be in a position to have sufficient wisdom to enter the political arena."

He pleaded for privacy while he completes his studies over the next two and a half years at Oxford, offering a swipe to unnamed journalists - which must include the Guardian - for trawling Facebook to uncover that Halloween photograph and other information. Future publicity will apparently be limited to a photocall later this week at his college, Christchurch.

Seeking to pre-empt the obvious question, he added: "To those of you who consider it odd that a 19 year old should assume such a position as the chairmanship of a political party, my response is [that] my position was based on the collective will of the party - unanimously endorsed by 50 to 60 members of our central executive committee and the federal council of the PPP.

"The precedent was set when my grandfather was executed. My grandmother, Begum Nusrat Bhutto, became chairperson; as you know my mother then assumed this role. Eventually I hope to complete the mission of my mother. I urge you to accept that, for the greater good of the party, the continuity of my family's involvement was considered best."

It did not stop the questions, of course. Using the incredulous tone he normally adopts with cabinet ministers, Paxman boomed a question about what on earth the young man thought he had to offer Pakistan.

It was like watching a bully kicking a kitten.

Bilawal answered politely that he had been asked to do it and had been raised to it by his mother. Asked by another questioner whether he feared for his life, he answered: "I fear more for my privacy."

He added: "If they don't want to vote for Bhuttos, they will not vote for them. It was not my choice to live outside Pakistan, it was made impossible when my mum went into exile."

And with that word - mum - the young man underlined just what he has lost this last fortnight.