WI Benazir Bhutto Survived

[John Fredrick Parker]

Coming up on the fourth anniversary of the assassination, I was thinking now'd be a good time to revisit this What if.

I think we can take it as a given she'd become PM again (or President?). Can we also take it she'd be doing a better job? How much better could relations with the US be, and how would affect the War in Afghanistan, et el? What could be the butterflies therein? And what else?

 

[Cook]

I think we can take it as a given she'd become PM again...

Just how many times do you think she can duck?

 

[RogueBeaver]

If Musharraf's gone, I think she's still in office today. But in policy terms, I don't see that much difference except a more conciliatory public tone.

Cook: Not unless they convince her that open-air rallies are impossible to lock down without entire battalions being deployed. Obviously no one learned from the Gandhi assassination 16 years earlier.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

^^Concilliatory to whom?

 

[RogueBeaver]

^^Concilliatory to whom?

The US, obviously.

 

[Hyperbolus]

Would democracy in Pakistan be healthier today?
It seems to me as though her popularity and to some extent her legitimacy/authority would badly decline because of very high expectations from the electorate and inevitable (deep) policy differences with Washington.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

If Musharraf's gone, I think she's still in office today. But in policy terms, I don't see that much difference except a more conciliatory public tone.

Could this rhetoric have the effect of making the American public warmer to Pakistani relations, possibly building trust between the new goverment and American institutions?

Not that this won't be subject to events -- for example, if bin Laden is still found in Abottabad and taken out by US forces...

 

[Ak-84]

She would have been leader of the opposition. Her assassination gave a huge symphathy vote to her party and made Musharrafs people public enemy number 1, yet her party could still only manage a plurality of seats and in fact the Musharraf party won the most votes. What happens is that BB becomes leader of the opposition and she fades into irrelevance. We see an implosion of her party in much the same manner as we ar seeing it now, Musharraf is still in power and I think his influence would have waned, but he would probably still eke out something.

She had been away from the country for more then a decade and she was badly out of touch with how much Pakistan had change.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

She would have been leader of the opposition. Her assassination gave a huge symphathy vote to her party and made Musharrafs people public enemy number 1, yet her party could still only manage a plurality of seats and in fact the Musharraf party won the most votes.

That's only if you count the pro and anti Musharraf "factions"* as a unit -- in fact, you add up the PPP's plurality and the PLM-N alone add up to a majority in the popular vote OTL. On the wider point, from what I could follow on the news at the time, Musharaff was pretty much finished anyway...

*AIUI, they're really, for all intents and purposes, separate parties