Bhutto and the Press :The Dream That Was Benazir Bhutto - by Shahihd Mahmood

Twenty-years later, Bhutto is now dead ­ depressing both in its predictability as in its brutality. My views towards this ex-Prime Minister had changed - becoming cynical soon after that first editorial cartoon. That first drawing stands unique in my Bhutto-cartoon-portfolio. Subsequent editorials, bar that first drawing, depict her with the virtues of an asp. That innocent, fluttering white headscarf that I had drawn some twenty years ago had now become a symbol of excess and corruption. A recent headline from October 2007 in the Telegraph struck a cord with me: "Benazir Bhutto - a kleptocrat in a Hermes headscarf." When Bhutto was sworn in as Prime Minister in 1988 she very quickly began to flex her considerable hubris. Pakistan became her personal fiefdom, lorded by a feudal - with her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, a man known for his unashamed corruption, appointed as the national exchequer.

[for more click on the heading - Shahid Mahmood is a Toronto based syndicated cartoonist]