Howard supplanted

Following the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, the country’s ‘ex-military’ president Pervez Musharraf has achieved a national opprobrium matched only by former Australian prime minister John Howard.

Former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif has denounced Musharraf as the source of “all the problems confronting the nation.”

Strange, but I seem to recall it was Bhutto’s corruption-mired prime ministership that helped tip her country into the spiral of instability that culminated in the ascendancy of the military under Musharraf.

The slaying of Bhutto is, of course, to be unconditionally condemned. Quite arguably, however, Musharraf is a prominent symptom of a deeper malaise.