ISLAMABAD, Jan 31: It was all bouquets of tribute for Benazir Bhutto in the Senate on Thursday as both political friends and foes vowed to uphold her democratic legacy, but the interim government dismissed an opposition demand that it ask the United Nations to investigate the former prime minister’s assassination.
Leader of the Opposition in Senate Raza Rabbani renewed the demand of his Pakistan People’s Party for a UN probe at the start of a long reference in memory of the party leader, which was marked by a unanimous praise for her political struggle and courage.
However, Law Minister Syed Afzal Haider, who wound up the debate spanning two sittings on the second day of an opposition-called session, said the law of the land charged only the country’s own agencies with such investigations, although help had been sought also from Britain’s Scotland Yard police.
Mr Rabbani took the flour again to thank senators for their sentiments, including some of the most unexpected praise from some members of the formerly ruling Pakistan Muslim League, and said the government’s claims pointed to the possibility of the plotting and financing of the assassination having been taken place outside Pakistan’s territorial limits and, therefore, the only means to get to the truth was a UN investigation commission as one set up to probe the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
He said his party had great respect for the Scotland Yard, but regretted that the terms of reference for their investigators made them “subservient to Pakistani investigators” and limited the scope of their investigation to the cause of Ms Bhutto’s death, leaving out the question of who planned and who carried out the conspiracy.The UN Security Council had condemned Ms Bhutto’s killing in a gun-and- bomb attack on Dec 27 on the same day but cannot launch an inquiry into such a crime without the request from of the government of the country where an incident has happened.
Mr Rabbani said his party had no trust in the regime’s inquiry because, according to him, it would not be able to unveil the ‘real assassins’ who had sought to destabilise the federation of Pakistan by killing a leader who was struggling for the rights of working classes, a complete transfer of power to the people and elimination of the army’s role from politics for ever.
Almost all who spoke hailed Ms Bhutto as a martyr, except a few from the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, Prof Sajid Mir of the Jamiat Ahle Hadith and Maulana Samiul Haq of his own JUI faction, who referred to her assassination as ‘a tragic incident’ or just murder, but they all did came out with a profuse praise for her political role and courage to challenge dictatorships.
But MMA’s most prominent figure, Prof Khurshid Ahmed of the Jamaat-i-Islami, called her’s “a martyr’s death” for whose perpetrators, he said, “even any extreme punishment will be not be enough”. Other Jamaat members also caller Ms Bhutto a martyr as did all others on the opposition and treasury benches.
The main tribute from the treasury benches came from a former education minister and one-time chief of the ISI, Lt-Gen (retd) Javed Ashraf Qazi, who said he found Ms Bhutto as “the most decisive and hard-working” of the four prime ministers he had worked with and a “thorough patriot” who founded and developed all resources to develop Pakistan’s guide-missile programme during the first of her two short-lived terms.
He said he could imagine Ms Bhutto’s feelings when she was “wrongly accused” of being a security risk and criticised unspecified people who, he said, used the situation created by her death to try to create hatred among provinces.
Information Minister Nisar Memon said Ms Bhutto was targeted for “openly challenging terrorists” as did President Pervez Musharraf for which he faced abortive assassination attempts and told the house that the interim government was determined to carry on the electoral process now in progress undeterred by such actions.
PML-N parliamentary leader Ishaq Dar said he believed Ms Bhutto’s ‘shahadat’ (martyrdom) was part of a “mega plan (of assassinations) ... in place” and reiterated the pledge by the PPP and his party in a Charter of Democracy signed by them to restore the Constitution to the pre-Oct 1999 coup position if they won two-thirds majority in the Feb 18 elections, barring some provisions such as increase in women’s reserved parliamentary seats.
MQM parliamentary leader Babar Khan Ghauri said there was no parallel to Ms Bhutto’s courage as a woman politician in the present-day world and pledged that his party would abide by an understanding with the PPP leader to end their “old acrimonies”, although he stopped short of backing the demand for a UN probe as he called for removing the doubts of her family and party.
But his party colleague Allama Abbas Komeli said he fully supported the PPP demand for a UN probe and called the Bhutto family as “the family of martyrs”.
PML-Q’s former tourism minister Neelofar Bakhtiar’s tribute to what she called “a brave and courageous two-time prime minister” was tinged with an apparent indictment of the government dominated by her party members as she talked of the country been plunged into a “chaotic uncertainty”, people having “lost hope”, doubts about the fairness of the coming elections and the prevailing flour, electricity and gas crises and said: “Someone has to come forward to speak truth.”
