Salman Ahmad on Pakistan

Writing in today's Washington Post, the Pakistani singing star says he doesn't like Musharraf--or Bhutto:

Yet Benazir Bhutto is no savior. The queen of hypocrisy, she has managed to hypnotize Western liberals with her claim to represent progressive elements in the Muslim world. Bhutto is a charlatan. How can she call herself a democrat while also appointing herself head of the Pakistan People's Party for life? Her time as prime minister brought staggering levels of corruption and graft. Bhutto's niece and sister-in-law accuse her of conspiring to murder her own brother, Murtaza, who challenged her power during her second term. She continues to see Pakistan as her personal feudal fiefdom to be plundered. A false prophet of democracy, she threatens to bring back the rule of the gangster rather than the rule of law.

During the late '90s, I recorded a song called "Accountability" and made a video that satirized Pakistani politicians whose corruption scandals were being reported internationally. The response of Bhutto's government was to ban the video and threaten my life. In the years since Bhutto fled Pakistan to escape corruption investigations, her desire to regain power has blinded her to the struggle being waged by Pakistanis on behalf of true democracy. A member of her own party, Aitzaz Ahsan, the lawyer who won Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry's reinstatement as chief justice of the Supreme Court after Musharraf dismissed him early this year, languishes in jail -- along with thousands of others. Meanwhile, Bhutto attends diplomatic receptions and makes speeches about freedom and liberty. While lawyers and human rights activists faced the threat of injury and death for standing up to Musharraf's regime, she was in sunny Dubai, waiting for Washington's go-ahead to return.