Political poster boys

AN UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCE of Operation Sindoor has been that South Asia's two poster boys of dynastic democracy surfaced and made fools of themselves.

- TAVLEEN SINGH

I speak of Bilawal Bhutto and Rahul Gandhi. They would not be considered political leaders at all if it were not for their illustrious surnames. As someone who believes dynastic succession should have ended when feudalism did, I watched the performance of these two political princes with real interest.

The first performance came from Bilawal Bhutto, who made a speech on the banks of the Indus a day after India decided to suspend the Indus Water Treaty. In this speech, he threatened that either water would flow down the Indus or the "blood of our enemies". His Urdu remains bad, so he used melodrama to compensate and, in the manner of a crazed messiah, shrieked "the Indus has always been ours, is ours, and will be ours". This one speech was proof that not only was the heir to the mighty Bhutto dynasty linguistically challenged, but that he was politically challenged as well.

But Pakistan's military rulers were clearly impressed with his performance and sent him off to Washington to convince people that it was Pakistan that was the victim of terrorism and that India's allegations were lies.