In BB's wake

[Nonchalant]

In BB's wake

Jan 2nd 2008 | ISLAMABAD
From Economist.com

The election is put back to February 18th

AFTER four days of rioting, slaughter and political grandstanding, the bereaved followers of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s assassinated opposition leader, began negotiating with the camp of President Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday January 1st over the staging of the country’s impending general election. The next day the electoral commission said that the election would be postponed to February 18th.

Miss Bhutto died in a suicide attack in Rawalpindi on December 27th while campaigning for the election, which was supposed to be held on January 8th. The former ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Q) party, which is loyal to the recently demobbed Mr Musharraf, and the electoral commission, which is allegedly also loyal to the president, argued for a delay. They cited worries over the destruction of at least 13 polling stations in Miss Bhutto’s southern Sindh province, as well as festering insecurity. They may also have feared that a surge of sympathy for Miss Bhutto would galvanise opposition to Mr Musharraf.

For its part the PPP, now nominally led by Miss Bhutto’s 19-year-old son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, with her widower, Asif Zardari, as co-chairman and, in effect, his son’s regent, had insisted that the election be held on time. In a joint statement, Mr Zardari and his son said: “The January 8th elections must proceed as scheduled. This will not only be a tribute to the memory of Benazir Bhutto, but even more important, a reaffirmation of the cause of democracy for which she died.”

The PPP fears that the postponement will allow time for Pakistani sympathies to dwindle. It will also give Mr Musharraf’s army agents pause to make fresh arrangements to rig the election in his favour. They have, after all, rigged the recent elections presided over by Mr Musharraf. On Monday PPP officials said that Miss Bhutto had been due to hand a long dossier on Mr Musharraf’s latest election-rigging schemes to a visiting American delegation.

Other opposition parties, notably Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (N), the third biggest, wanted a prompt election for much the same reasons. Mr Sharif, the main opponent of the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, is hoping to profit from a wave of anti-Musharraf feeling there. His prospects were poor before Miss Bhutto’s murder, but could perk up considerably. That would represent a fresh logistical challenge for Mr Musharraf’s agents, who may consider it imperative to prevent the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League (N) winning sufficient votes to be able to form a government together. On Monday Mr Sharif demanded that Mr Musharraf—who deposed him in a coup in 1999—should step down, a unity government be formed, then elections held.

They said on Tuesday that a delay had been agreed “in principle”. The next day they confirmed the poll had been put back by more than a month. The response of Mr Zardari, a politician who was accused of massive corruption during Miss Bhutto’s two terms in office, will now be observed. He was reported to be negotiating terms with Chaudhry Shujaat, leader of the party loyal to Mr Musharraf, despite an earlier suggestion by Mr Zardari that it was behind his wife’s death.

Indeed, the identity of Miss Bhutto’s killers seems currently less controversial in Pakistan than the method of her death. The government blamed a Taliban warlord in north-west Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud, who is alleged to have been behind an earlier attack on Miss Bhutto, in October. That consisted of twin suicide blasts, which killed over 140 people during a rally to welcome her home from an eight-year self-imposed exile. Yet Miss Bhutto alleged that powerful individuals within the security forces, and in the Pakistan Muslim League (Q), which had most to lose from her return to Pakistan, were responsible. In a country where the armed forces have bred distrust of authority—and where Osama bin Laden is more popular than the president—that theory was popular. Many, perhaps most, Pakistanis are said to consider that Mr Musharraf’s agents were involved in killing Miss Bhutto.

The government has done little to dispel their suspicion. Its performance after Miss Bhutto’s murder has been shoddy. Its initial reports suggested that she had been shot dead before the suicide blast, then officials said that she had in fact brained herself on the lever of her car’s sun-roof, while trying to escape the blast. On Tuesday an interior ministry spokesman suggested that the government might suspend judgment, pending an investigation.
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/...ry_id=10421127