There was little in President Pervez Musharraf’s speech on Wednesday night that could soothe the raw nerves of millions touched by Benazir Bhutto’s murder. His assent to getting the Scotland Yard to come in and investigate the assassination, according to PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari, comes too late. It comes at a time when all evidence which should have been preserved has long been washed clean from the scene of the crime in Rawalpindi.

It is worth mentioning that the slain leader had asked Musharraf to call in the Yard after an attack on her Karachi rally on October 18, but the request was denied. Party sources alleged, with justification, that Bhutto was never provided adequate security. These are lapses that will continue to cast a shadow over Bhutto’s death probe.

A pall of gloom continues to envelop Pakistan. Small memorial sites have propped up along the roadside in Rawalpindi, Lahore and other cities where people gather to lay wreaths in front of Bhutto’s picture; at a candlelight vigil held in Lahore, activists, joined by the city’s traders, named a major intersection after the leader.

On Wednesday night, many found Musharraf’s signature arrogant tone and tenor and the ungainly body language missing. But this was of little consolation as he went on to dwell on the damage done to the economy and the infrastructure amounting to billions of rupees caused by three days of rioting that ensued in the aftermath of Bhutto’s killing. His repeated reference to the extent of the violence reported from Sindh, Bhutto’s home province, did not go down well with the people for obvious reasons: in a country fractured by inter-provincial misgivings, one, much less the president himself, does not bring up such sensitivities.

... contd.