ISLAMABAD, Dec 28: A postponement of the January 8 elections appeared imminent on Friday, a day after an assassin cut short Benazir Bhutto’s quest for democracy and the campaigns of political parties.

As an embattled government planned to consult both its political foes and friends, the anger sparked by Thursday’s killing of the former prime minister immediately after she had addressed a campaign rally of her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in Rawalpindi seemed too intense to allow a peaceful or credible vote so soon.

Of the main opposition players in the fray, the Pakistan Muslim League-N of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif announced the boycott of the elections within hours after what was officially described as a gun-and-bomb attack outside Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh park. But the PPP, which buried its leader at her ancestral graveyard at Garhi Khuda Bux in Sindh province on Friday amid violent countrywide protests, is expected to decide its course of action within a few days.

Political sources said it would appear difficult for the PPP to carry on an election campaign so soon after the assassination of its charismatic leader and during a 40-day mourning it has already announced for her.

Mr Sharif, while announcing his party’s boycott decision at a news conference on Thursday, had also appealed to PPP and two other opposition groups in the electoral contest — the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam of Maulana Fazlur Rehman and the NWFP-based Awami National Party — to follow suit.

If that happens, it would mean a complete opposition boycott of the Jan 8 elections for the National Assembly and the four provincial assemblies as several other opposition parties grouped in the All Parties Democratic Movement had already abstained from the process from the start mainly for fear of vote-rigging and the government’s refusal to restore about 60 judges of the Supreme Court and the four provincial high courts sacked as a consequence of the now lifted extra-constitutional emergency imposed by President Pervez Musharraf on Nov 3 in his then capacity as Chief of the Army Staff.

The formerly ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) has not yet come out with its views on the issue, but both its interim Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro and his Law Minister Syed Afzal Haider said on Friday their government could consult political parties about the post-assassination situation, including the elections.

But it remained doubtful if all opposition parties would join any conference convened by a government that they don’t see eye to eye with on any matter and want it to be replaced by a neutral government of national consensus to oversee the elections. Some of them, such as the PML-N, are even calling for President Musharraf to step down immediately and let Mr Soomro take over as acting president in his capacity as Senate chairman.

While the final decision about a postponement to let the tempers cool down is likely to be taken by the president himself, a key factor will also be the stance of the PPP, which has to decide soon not only about the participation in the election but also about its future leader.

Though Ms Bhutto’s memory as a martyr as that of her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is likely to remain a cementing force for what is regarded as the country’s largest national political party, political sources said the best chance for PPP lay in a collective leadership in the absence of a charismatic figure like its dead leaders.

While Mr Soomro said at a news conference he planned to write to politicians for consultations about how to tackle issues including elections, Law Minister Haider told Dawn that “it will now depend on the political parties whether the election should be held now or not”.“Our prime minister is in touch with the heads of political parties,” the minister said, adding that a decision about what should be done was likely to be taken after the three-day mourning the government had declared for Ms Bhutto.