Teenage son Bilawal succeeds Benazir

Trackback URL

Download PDF

Slain Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto’s son Bilawal yesterday was named chairman of her party, with her husband named co-chairman, two top party officials told AFP.

Slain Benazir’s party will take part in national elections set for January 8, her husband Asif Ali Zardari said yesterday.

The party of former Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif will also take part in elections, after earlier saying it would boycott, two spokesmen of the party said.

Zardari earlier called on Sharif to reverse his decision to boycott the polls, which Sharif had announced as a gesture of solidarity in the wake of Benazir’s assassination on Thursday.

“We will go to elections,” Zardari told a news conference at which his son Bilawal was presented as the new chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party.

“We are grateful to Nawaz Sharif for announcing a boycott of the election. But we appeal to him to end the boycott and take part.”

Meanwhile, a personal spokesman for Sharif said the decision was taken after Benazir’s husband Asif Ali Zardari had asked Sharif’s party to participate.

“We will contest the election,” a party spokesman said.

“No major party should boycott because it would damage democracy,” the spokesman, Zaeem Qadri, quoted Zardari as telling Sharif.

The decision came just three days after Bhutto was assassinated, leaving a void at the head of the PPP.

“Democracy is the best revenge,” Bilawal told a chaotic news conference in the Bhutto family’s ancestral home here, vowing the party’s “long and historic struggle for democracy will continue with a new vigour.”

Benazir’s husband on Sunday demanded a UN probe into her assassination, along the lines of the world body’s probe of the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

“We demand a Hariri commission-style investigation,” Asif Ali Zardari said at a news conference. “We are writing to the United Nations for an international probe into her martyrdom.”

“I chose not to give them permission for an autopsy,” Asif Ali Zardari told a news conference presenting the couple’s son Bilawal as the new leader of Bhutto’s party.

“I’ve lived here long enough to know how and where the autopsy would have been conducted,” he said, adding that any autopsy would have been “useless”.

Moreover, Pakistan’s ruling party said Sunday that January 8 elections may be delayed up to four months because of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

As political manoeuvring in the wake of Benazir’s death picked up pace, another key opposition party said earlier it would reverse an earlier decision to boycott the vote if Benazir’s group decided to run.

“We will definitely contest the elections if the PPP decides to contest,” said Sadiq ul-Farooq, a senior member of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N party.

Benazir’s slaying last Thursday plunged the nuclear-armed country into a political crisis and triggered nationwide riots that left at least 44 people dead ahead of the parliamentary polls, seen by the United States and other Western nations as key to promoting stability in the country.

Controversy remained about whether she was killed by gunshots, a shrapnel wound or the concussive force of the blast.

She was buried without an autopsy and the debate over her cause of death undermined confidence in the government and further angered her followers, many of whom believe elements within President Pervez Musharraf’s administration played a role in the killing.

Tariq Azim, information secretary of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, said the parliamentary elections would lose credibility if it they are held on January 8, with Benazir’s party in mourning and other opposition groups intent on boycotting.

He expected authorities to announce a delay within 24 hours.

“How long the postponement will be for will up to the Election Commission,” he told The Associated Press. “I think we are looking at a delay of a few weeks … of up to three or four months.”

Police struggled to control thousands of mourners outside the meeting, who shouted “Musharraf is a killer!” and called for the separation of Benazir’s home province of Sindh from the rest of Pakistan.

“Benazir Bhutto sacrificed her life for the sake of this country and for democracy,” her husband Asif Ali Zardari told mourners after they had thrown flowers at the mausoleum where she was buried. “But her blood will not be in vain … Bhutto will remain alive in the hearts of people.”

Local media quoted unnamed sources as saying Benazir’s 19-year-old son Bilawal Zardari would be appointed her successor, extending one of Asia’s greatest political dynasties. Benazir Bhutto’s father Pakistan’s first elected prime minister founded the party in 1967 and its electoral success since then has largely depended on the Bhutto name.

Other party members said Benazir’s husband, a key powerbroker who was freed in December 2004 after eight years in detention on graft charges, should take the job.

“We will come up with a consensus, Benazir’s will and the meeting will determine it,” Zardari told reporters when asked whether he wanted the post. “The party has a lot of brave people and a lot of brave leaders.”

Since Thursday, unrest has killed at least 44 people and caused tens of millions of dollars of damage.

They have wrecked nine election offices along with the voter rolls and ballot boxes inside hampered the printing of ballot slips and the training of poll workers, the election commission said. The commission has called an emergency meeting for Monday.In fresh violence, two men blew themselves up Sunday close to the residence in eastern Pakistan of Ijazul Haq, the former religious affairs minister and senior leader of the ruling party, said district police chief Zafar Abbas Bukhari. Both men died, but there were no other casualties.

Video of Benazir’s assassination shows a man shooting at her three times from close range seconds before her car is caught up in an explosion from a suicide attacker.

Authorities initially said she died from bullet wounds, but Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema later said Benazir was killed when the force of the bomb smashed her head into the sunroof. Bhutto’s spokeswoman Sherry Rehman said she and other witnesses saw a bullet wound in neck and said Cheema’s remarks were “dangerous and nonsensical.”

The government blamed the attack on Baitullah Mehsud, a Taliban commander with links to al-Qaeda, who heads a militant coalition based in its lawless tribal regions. The coalition is committed to fighting the government and its support of the US But his spokesmen denied the charge.

A spokesman for Benazir’s party, Farhatullah Babar, said the government’s accusations appeared to be “a planted story, an incorrect story, because they want to divert the attention.”

Cheema said Benazir’s party was free to exhume her body to conduct an autopsy, but rejected calls for an international investigation. An independent domestic judicial investigation should be completed within seven days of the appointment of its presiding judge, he said.

(AFP, AP)

Leave a Reply