PML-Q, JUI-F want election delay

NAUDERO—PML-Q said Sunday that Jan. 8 elections may be delayed up to four months because of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, while the opposition leader’s supporters debated who should succeed her and whether to take part in the vote. As political maneuvering in the wake of Bhutto’s death picked up pace, another key opposition party said it would reverse an earlier decision to boycott the vote if Bhutto’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. Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, which was expected to announce its decision Sunday, was meeting in her ancestral home of Naudero to decide on a successor as its leader — with either her son or husband seen as favorites.
Bhutto’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 Jan. 8, with Bhutto’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 Bhutto’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 Bhutto’s 19-year-old son Bilawal Zardari would be appointed her successor, extending one of Asia’s greatest political dynasties. 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 Bhutto’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, Bhutto’s will and the meeting will determine it,” Zardari told reporters when asked whether he wanted the post.—Agencies