Fatima Bhutto learning the art of politicking?

ISLAMABAD: Though slain former Pakistan premier Benazir Bhutto's niece Fatima Bhutto has said she does not want to take the plunge into politics, she seems to be learning the art of politicking fast.
 
Fatima's cousin Sassi, the daughter of Benazir's second brother Shahnawaz -- who was found dead in France when he was 27 -- is visiting Pakistan, reportedly at Fatima's invitation, and there are talks that Fatima is trying to reorganise factions of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP).
 
Fatima, who has been critical of Benazir's son Bilawal taking over the PPP mantle following his mother's assassination in December last year, has established contact with senior politician Elahi Buksh Soomro and sought his cooperation in reorganising the party.
 
Her spokesman Inayat Bhatti has, however, brushed aside reports that the young Bhuttos were planning to launch a new version of the PPP or that Sassi is on a political visit to Pakistan. "Its Sassi's right to visit her country anytime and go to any place," Bhatti told reporters when asked why Sassi had never visited the country earlier.
 
The invitation extended to Sassi is surprising because even though Fatima and Sassi's mothers are sisters, Fatima has refused to have any connection with her biological mother Fauzia or any link with Sassi. Since the age of five, Fatima has lived with her stepmother Ghinwa and has often talked about how Benazir persuaded her biological mother to return to Karachi to seek parental custody after her father's death.
 
"It was just vulgar and crude," Fatima often said of her meeting with her biological mother. "I was in biology class in ninth grade. Then the principal came and said, 'There's a woman here who claims to be your mother'."
 
Fatima said she locked herself in the nurse's office as the press swarmed outside. A few years later, Fauzia launched an unsuccessful court bid for custody and then returned to the US.
 
Murtaza and Shahnawaz, who fled to Kabul following their father Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's execution in 1979, married two Afghan sisters in Kabul. Both marriages did not work. Murtaza's marriage collapsed after his brother's death. In Syria, where he finally settled, Murtaza married Ghinwa, a Lebanese national.
 
Though little is known about 20-something Sassi, she lives with her mother in the US and her name often crops up in property cases related to the Bhutto family. She owns one of the family's houses in the upmarket Clifton area of the port city of Karachi and has a share in the family's rice mill in their ancestral village of Naudero.
 
Sassi and Fatima's half-brother Zulfiqar Junior visited the Bhutto estate on Sunday and are scheduled to visit the family mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Baksh on Monday.
 
Fatima and her stepmother Ghinwa have often hinted that they believe Benazir or her widower Asif Ali Zardari had a hand in the killing of her father Murtaza and she is penning a book that will detail the cause of his death.
 
"Well, I am certainly very afraid for this country," Fatima told writer William Dalrymple in an interview when asked if she was afraid for her own safety." After all, this man (Zardari) knows no limits. He has a record. He has, as they say, form. And he is now clearly indulging in the politics of revenge and retribution. It's nothing new  it's how he has always been," she said in the interview.
 
"But what can you do? You just have to carry on as you can, and try to tell the truth as you see it. That's all you can do."
 
Fatima is in no mood to give up. "But I am not going to give up this struggle. I am not going to stand down quietly. This is bigger than us  this is about justice. I will continue to do all I can to stand between Asif and a clean record."