ISLAMABAD, Dec 30: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) on Sunday seemed to have shocked its political opponents by overcoming its grief so soon after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and deciding to go into the January 8 elections under a new leadership without seeking a postponement.
The surprise decision by the PPP Central Executive Committee in Naudero, only three days after the party leader was killed in a gun-and-bomb attack in Rawalpindi after she had addressed an election rally, looked aimed at cashing on a sympathy wave that has put the parties of President Pervez Musharraf’s loyalists on the defensive.
The government had indicated its readiness to postpone the elections after the PPP had called for a 40-day mourning for the former prime minister and the other major opposition party — the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N) of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif — had announced a boycott of the vote in sympathy and urged other contesting parties to follow suit.
A short postponement had seemed imminent after government sources said wishes of the PPP as the aggrieved party about delaying or holding the polls on schedule would be honoured.
While interim Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro had begun sounding opposition politicians on calling an all-party conference to review the post-assassination scenario, the Election Commission too set a meeting of its own for Monday to discuss the situation after attacks on some of its offices in Sindh and the possibility of postponing the elections.
But the PPP, in a calculated move against most calculations by political pundits, refrained from asking for a postponement, apparently thinking the loss of its charismatic leader could be compensated in the elections by the sympathy wave while the memory of her assassination was so fresh in the people’s minds and her recent inspirational campaign speeches were still ringing in their ears.In the Naudero meeting, held soon after the “soyem” rites for Ms Bhutto, the advocates of going into the elections right now appeared to have prevailed over those who thought engaging into political wheeling and dealing so soon after the perceived martyrdom of their leader would amount to a disrespect to her memory.
The point was firmly nailed down by the PPP’s newly designated chairman, Ms Bhutto’s son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, in an apparently prepared remark at his first news conference after the party meeting: “My mother always said ‘democracy is the best revenge’.”
The PML-N leadership, which made some quick moves to forge a political solidarity with its grief-stricken one-time bitter rival, said it would consider a PPP call to reconsider the boycott decision and indicated that the appeal would be honoured.
But the postponement possibility did not seem to be out of the way yet as some figures in the formerly ruling Pakistan Muslim League, including former president Farooq Leghari and secretary-general Mushahid Hussain Syed are reported to have favoured delaying the elections for the National Assembly and the four provincial assemblies to let the situation cool down.
Though the Dec 27 killing of Ms Bhutto, apparently by an assassin’s bullets, along with 23 other killed by a suicide bomb blast at the same time, had forced a suspension of election campaigns of all political parties, it greatly mobilised the angered PPP followers through nationwide protests, which often turned violent particularly in Sindh.
Though there will be no polling for the seats for which Ms Bhutto herself was a candidate, the situation is likely to give a clear advantage to the candidates of both the PPP and PML-N while those of the PML and other parties in the previous ruling coalition could feel restrained in the remaining campaign period by the prevailing anger and protests over the PPP chairperson’s assassination.
