Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf gets a bad press; Benazir Bhutto a too kind one. Which of them is the real rogue?
When Mr Musharraf, as army commander, tried to engineer war with India over Kashmir in 1999, he demonstrated his roguish side. However, many of his opponents in Pakistan will concede that, since he deposed Nawaz Sharif and assumed power, he has been largely a benevolent dictator.
Compared with the last days of the Shah of Iran - and many in the American foreign policy establishment are falsely comparing what happened then with what is happening today in Pakistan - the country has been, until Bhutto's assassination, rather stable. That is, except in its lawless frontier provinces that border Afghanistan - a problem area even in British colonial days.
Until now, Mr Musharraf has rarely cracked the whip. His riot police act with relative moderation. His jails are not full. Executions are rare and never for political offences. When one sits down and talks to Mr Musharraf, one get answers rather than bluster. Pakistan today is not Iran of yesterday, neither in the type of leadership nor in its degree of religious fervour: the Islamist parties have never gained more than 11 per cent of the vote in an election.
Bhutto and her husband seem to have been manifestly corrupt. The one chance of nailing her lay in Switzerland where she had stashed cash in quantities she could never have earned honestly. At the time of her death, she was appealing against a Swiss conviction for money-laundering. Many believe she was implicated in her brother's death.
Certainly, she quarrelled with her brothers and her mother, all of whom competed to have the lead billing in the family's political drama. She was also estranged from her husband. Yet now, according to her will, her husband is her chosen successor. For Bhutto keeping the family - namely her 19-year-old son - in the line of power was more important than developing a democratic, openly competitive party. We still don't know if her father was blameless in the political murder that saw him hanged. Nor must we forget that it was her father who started the nuclear weapons project and swore that if need be 'the people will eat grass' in order to make that possible.
In comparison, Mr Musharraf has done no great favours for his family, nor earned excessive wealth.