Benazir Bhutto, dead - PhillyBlog

Hospitalitygirl · #1 (**permalink**) 12-27-2007, 09:42 AM

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news...icidebomb.html

This article says that she is seriously injured, but Fox 29 updated and reported that she has died, as well as a number of others, thanks to the crazy suicide bombers.

seand · #2 (**permalink**) 12-27-2007, 11:02 AM

This is actually a huge setback for the idea of popular democracy taking hold in Pakistan any time soon. I'm surprised there is less response to this.

Hospitalitygirl · #3 (**permalink**) 12-27-2007, 11:04 AM

I posted and beat Jayfar's thread by 3 minutes, but his actually has a few responses in it. I will ask a mod to merge or delete this one.

phillyaggie · #4 (**permalink**) 12-27-2007, 04:40 PM

while its sad to see her getting assasinated like this, I would say it is not such a huge setback to democracy in Pakistan. Democracy in Pakistan hasn't been in practice for about 60% of its entire existance. The rest of the time, elections brought Benazir Bhutto to power or was replaced by Nawaz Sharif, both of whom most Pakistanis will tell you are/were crooks and looted the country for personal/familial gain. Benazir Bhutto came to power about the same way/reason how Indira Gandhi came to power in India-- both were daughters of ex-prime ministers...while Jawaharlal Nehru died of ill health while in office, Benazir's father was executed by the Pakistan military's junta back in the 1970s. Essentially, the powerbases of Pakistan People's Party and India's Congress Party were and continue to be very feudalistic...the parties themselves don't practice democracy and essentially crown a widely known person as their leader for life.

that's my $0.02 about the impact of Bhutto's death on Pakistani democracy.

Mark B. Cohen · #5 (**permalink**) 12-28-2007, 10:41 PM

Internal party democracy through primary elections was an invention of Robert LaFollette in Wisconsin and Hiram Johnson in California in the 1890's that swept the country. Pennsylvania began having primary elections in 1904.

But the vast majority of countries in the world today have no primary elections. As far as I know, only Canada, Israel, and Britain have any kind of primary elections as we know it, and each of these countries has them only to a limited degree. Generally parties around the world are organized like non-profits are here: an existing board fills vacancies and makes nominations.

In Europe, sometimes dues paying members are given the right to elect delegates who then make the decisions. But the sociologist Robert Michels long ago coined the phrase "the iron law of oligarachy" to describe how parties actually functioned most of the time in most European countries.

The reason other countries generally do not have a two-party system is because there is generally little internal party democracy. For the vast majority of the world's democratic participants, if you don't like the existing party candidates you have no choice but to form a new party.

phillyaggie · #6 (**permalink**) 12-28-2007, 10:54 PM

and new parties get formed all the time. In countries like India, coalition governments have become the norm since the 1990s...this has led to many issues getting highlighted that otherwise would not get the airing.

American 2-party system leaves much to be desired. I still get mad sometime when I think enough about it that the two parties have grabbed power and made the system stacked against any other party. American society would be far better off, IMO, if Americans get to actually choose their representatives instead of having to settle for the lesser of two evils.

The way the Green Party got shafted in 2000 was terrible.