Bilawal with his sister Asifa at their mother’s grave. Photo: AFP

He’s 19 years old, a first-year history student at Oxford University, a black belt in Taekwondo and enjoys a good game of cricket.

He’s also just been made the head of a political party in South Asia just three days after its leader - his mother - was assassinated after a public rally.

He’s Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the son of the late Pakistan opposition leader and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who on December 27 was killed along with 10 others in Rawalpindi.

Bilawal steps into a political dynasty that is as steep in the history of Pakistan politics as it is in bloodshed and death. Like the Kennedys in the United States, the Gandhis in India and the Suu Kyi family in Burma, Bilawal is part of a bloodline that has often been labelled "cursed" because of the tragic ways in which family members die while still in the prime of their lives.

 

Children light candles in honour of Benazir Bhutto after her death. Photo: AP

The Bhutto dynasty

His grandfather, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, founded the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and was Pakistan’s prime minister from 1973 to 1977, when he was deposed in a military coup. Just two years later in 1979, he was executed.

Three of his four children have now died in similarly violent circumstances. His son and the youngest child Shahnawaz was politically active, and was found dead in his apartment in southern France in 1985 at just 27 years of age. Reports stated that his had been poisoned after a family reunion.

His other son Murtaza, also politically active and a rival of his sister Benazir, was shot dead in a gun battle, and Benazir’s husband Asif Ali Zardari (who is now the co-chairman of the PPP) was jailed for a few years on charges that he was involved in his brother-in-law’s death.

 

Indira Gandhi with her father Jawaharlal Nehru.

The Nehru-Gandhi family

This Indian political family (not related to independence leader Mohandas Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1948), boasts of three prime ministers of India - Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira and Rajiv.

Jawaharlal Nehru, the son of one of Gandhi’s allies, Motilal Nehru, became India’s first prime minister in 1947 as head of the Congress party. His only child Indira Gandhi took over the reins as prime minister two years after his death in 1964. In 1984, in her second stint as PM, Indira, 67, was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards.

Her son Sanjay was her political adviser and the second most powerful politician in India. He was seen as the heir to the Gandhi political dynasty but in June 1980, he was killed in a plane crash at just 33.

His sudden death propelled his older brother Rajiv into politics. Rajiv was an airline pilot but became a political adviser to Indira just one year later, and in 1984, continued the Gandhi tradition by becoming his nation’s prime minister.

But Rajiv also continued another bloody family tradition. In 1991, while campaigning for another shot at the top political job, he was assassinated by a suicide bomber. The bomb was so strong that he apparently could only be identified by the tennis shoes he wore.

 

Top: The front-page of The Age newspaper on November 23, 1963; Middle: Robert Kennedy; Bottom: John F. Kennedy Jr and his wife Caroline Bassette.

The Kennedy clan

John F. Kennedy once said when he was in the White House: "Life is unfair." But long before then US president JFK was shot and killed in Dallas in November 1963, the Kennedy family was already earning the "cursed" tag. One of JFK’s brothers Joseph, 29, died in a plane crash in 1944 during WWII, and a sister Kathleen, 28, also died in another plane crash in 1948. Sister Rosemary was institutionalised in 1941 for retardation and a failed lobotomy.

JFK was the son of Joseph Patrick Kennedy, US ambassador to the UK under president Franklin Roosevelt. Political success flowed through the Kennedy bloodline, but scandal and death also coursed through its DNA. His brother, Robert Kennedy, a US senator and former attorney-general was assassinated in 1968 at 42. Another brother, US senator Edward Kennedy, was critically injured in a plane crash in 1964 and drove a car off a bridge in 1969 where his passenger drowned.

Just three months before JFK’s assassination, his second son Patrick Bouvier Kennedy died two days after being born six weeks premature. His first son John F. Kennedy Jr. was killed in a plane crash with his wife Carolyn Bassette in 1999.

 

Aung San Suu Kyi lays a wreath at the mausoleum of her father General Aung San. Photo: Reuters

The Aung San legacy

Closer to home is Burma. Its opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, 62, dominates the headlines of the world’s media every time the lack of freedom in Burma is mentioned. Suu Kyi is the daughter of General Aung San, Burma’s independence hero who was assassinated in 1947 when she was just two.

When Suu Kyi’s party won national elections in May 1990, she was expected to assume leadership of the country, but instead has been under house arrest for 11 years.

So do you think the "cursed" tag is appropriate for these politically active families? Or do you believe that in every family, there are deaths and tragedies, and that the misfortunes of these families are magnified only because they have such high-profile members?

Should Bilawal have been appointed PPP chairman and did he really have a choice? Has he been doomed by his DNA?

Source : http://blogs.smh.com.au/newsblog/archives/016896.html