On December 30, 2007, a conclave of feudal potentates gathered in the home of the slain Pakistani opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, to hear her last will and testament read out and its contents subsequently announced to the media. Where Mary was tentative, her modern-day equivalent left no doubt. She could certainly answer for her son.

A triumvirate consisting of her husband, Asif Zardari (one of Pakistan's most venal and discredited politicians, still facing corruption charges in three European courts) and two ciphers will run the party until Bhutto's 19-year-old son, Bilawal, comes of age. He will then become chairman-for-life and, no doubt, pass it on to his children. The fact that this is now official does not make it any less grotesque. The Pakistan People's Party is being treated as a family heirloom, a property to be disposed of at the will of its leader.

Poor Pakistan. Poor People's Party supporters. Both deserve better than this disgusting, medieval charade.

Bhutto's last decision was in the same autocratic mode as its predecessors, an approach that would cost her, tragically, her own life. Had she heeded the advice of some party leaders and not agreed to the US-brokered deal with President Pervez Musharraf or decided to boycott his parliamentary election, she might still be alive. Her last gift to the country does not augur well for its future. How can Western-backed politicians be taken seriously if they treat their party as a fiefdom and their supporters as serfs, while their courtiers abroad mouth sycophantic niceties concerning the young prince and his future.

That most of the People's Party's inner circle consists of spineless time-servers leading frustrated and melancholy lives is no excuse. All this could be transformed if inner-party democracy was implemented. There is a tiny layer of incorruptible and principled politicians inside the party, but they have been sidelined.

Dynastic politics is a sign of weakness, not strength. Bhutto was fond of comparing her family with the Kennedys, but chose to ignore that the Democratic Party, despite an addiction to big money, was not the instrument of any one family.

Democracy is enormously important in a country that has been governed by the military for more than half its life. Pakistan is not a "failed state" in the sense of the Congo or Rwanda. It is a dysfunctional state and has been in this situation for almost four decades.

At the heart of this dysfunctionality is the domination by the army. Each period of military rule has made things worse. It has prevented political stability and the emergence of stable institutions. The US bears direct responsibility, since it always regarded the military as the only institution it could do business with and, unfortunately, still does. This is the rock that has focused choppy waters into a headlong torrent.

The military's weaknesses are well known and have been amply documented. But the politicians are not in a position to cast stones. After all, Musharraf did not pioneer the assault on the judiciary so conveniently overlooked by the US Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte, and the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. The first attack on the Supreme Court was mounted by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's goons, who physically assaulted judges because they were angered by a decision that ran counter to their master's interests.

Some of us had hoped that, with her death, the People's Party might start a new chapter. After all, one of its main leaders, president of the Bar Association Aitzaz Ahsan, played a heroic role in the popular movement against the dismissal of the chief justice. Ahsan was arrested during the emergency and kept in solitary confinement. He is still under house arrest in Lahore. Had Bhutto been capable of thinking beyond family and faction, she should have appointed him chairman pending elections within the party. No such luck.