The Saddest Link

Was it just a fated matter of like father like daughter?

Benazir Bhutto was assassinated as she campaigned for the Pakistani presidency. Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was Pakistan's first popularly elected leader. He was arrested, tried and executed following a military coup.

To her grave she takes the answer to the question of why she returned from a life of relative ease to a country where many, perhaps millions revered her and perhaps an equal number loathed her. And where the people in power were keen on keeping it for themselves and away from her.

In a past BBC interview, Bhutto tried explaining why she would return. It was, of course, because of her father: "His blood runs in my veins and his presence is always around me."

In the assassination's aftermath, the BBC interviewed a friend, Victoria Scofield, who has known her since their time together at Oxford who said the despite the dangers, Bhutto felt compelled "to carry on the work begun by her father," and that ""as with her father, she has left her own legacy, her own stamp."

** Not in each case does a father want his child to follow his footsteps. **