Deep-rooted illiberal politics.

Gertrude Stein, the Pittsburg-born, Oakland raised American novelist, poet and playwright who lived in Paris for four decades famously said, 'What good are the roots when you can't take them with you?' There have been 260 million international migrants in 2017 - many that fled from war and oppression in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and all of them have not been so lucky to be able to carry the roots of their belonging with them and yet be accepted in the countries where they ended up migrating. There have been incidents like the tragedy in Christchurch but there also has been the discovery and projection to prominence of leadership like the 38-year-old Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand's Prime Minister, whose cosmopolitanism and humanism has demonstrated how true, able and competent leadership can inculcate inclusivity, harmonise society and blunt the divide between different communities and nationalities.

Eight years younger, a product of western education system and someone who was brought up by a mother that laid down huge sacrifices for democracy in this country, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is hardly the Jacinda Ardern young political prototype that this country so badly needs. It is only when you shift your political loyalty away from regionalism, tribalism, ethnicity and religion towards the state that you become a true pluralist leader and a harbinger of cosmopolitanism. You can then, like Jacinda Ardern, advocate that not only justice but every human being matters. But if you are only 'somewhere politician' who every now and then keeps turning to Larkana and Garhi Khuda Buksh to mark your political presence and make political statements then you will never turn into an 'anywhere politician' who pulls the lever of the lifted draw bridges down to link all the communities within a given State. Bilawal Bhutto, as Gertrude Stein stated, should be able to carry his roots along all over the country and project his 'state supporting' good 'civic nationalism' that seeks politeness, calmness and order in society rather than be a 'threatening ethnic nationalist' who arrogantly challenges the government and the state as he goes about on his train march executing his public contact campaign. Like all the preceding years, his karwan remains 'Karwan-e-Bhutto', and if his current style of politics continues it seems least unlikely that he may ever lead a 'Karwan-e Pakistan'.

The more he surrounds himself with 'Bhuttoism' the less enabled he would become...