Author And Journalist Fatima Bhutto Rejects Rumors Of Her Joining PTI

Author and journalist Fatima Bhutto has scotched rumours about her joining Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, accusing him of defending the legacy of former military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq, according to a report posted on The Wall Street Journal’s website.
Speaking at the Jaipur Literature Festival on Sunday, she made it clear this was ‘unlikely to happen. Ever’. “He (Imran Khan) has an incredible coziness not with the military but with dictatorship,” Ms Bhutto said of Imran Khan, a cricket legend-turned-politician.
Ms Bhutto accused Khan of defending the legacy of former dictator Gen Zia, saying he supported the 2002 referendum allowing Gen Pervez Musharraf, who had come to power with a coup, to extend his term.
In what the Journal said was a well-rehearsed argument to debunk the political credibility of the former cricket captain, Ms Bhutto went on to list more reasons why she opposed his political foray. “As a woman I worry very much about Imran’s politics,” said Ms Bhutto. She spoke of his opposition to amending a 2006 women’s bill in favour of victims of rape. She also questioned Khan’s commitment to secularism and to defending minorities. “Is he a saviour? No, I don’t think so,” said Ms Bhutto during a Pakistan-focused session at the literary festival. “Well, that’s the end of Imran Khan,” news anchor Karan Thapar, who moderated the panel, was quoted as saying.
The Journal said Khan’s political weight, long dismissed as irrelevant, started to gain new relevance in recent months. Although he started his party more than 15 years ago, only now is it starting to gain traction. On Christmas Day, over 100,000 people turned up to his rally in Karachi, where he vowed to stand up to the US and to fight corruption.
At the literary festival, where Ms Bhutto shared a stage with the Pakistani-American historian Ayesha Jalal, the tone was one of disillusionment with Pakistan’s political class. Ms Bhutto spoke of the ‘gulf’ that exists between the people in power and the rest of the country, saying that food scarcity not squabbles between institutions is the bigger worry for most people.
Despite her political lineage (another former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, was her aunt), Ms Bhutto has long eschewed direct involvement in national politics, the newspaper pointed out. Best known as a writer and a journalist, Ms Bhutto hasn’t spared members of her family in her political critiques. Her ‘Songs of Blood and Swords’, a 2010 memoir centered on the Bhutto dynasty, exposed feuding in her family and was damning of her late aunt. Spokespersons of Imran Khan’s PTI party did not respond to emailed requests for comment, WSJ said. Attempts to reach Mr Khan or his spokespersons by phone were unsuccessful.