The editorial summed up the kind of worry expressed on its front page reports: “Her assassination threatens to derail the entire process of Pakistan returning to an elected democratic rule, especially by a coalition of moderate and liberal leaders who could confront the growing menace of religious extremism and fanaticism. This strategy had the full blessings of the west, specially the United States, as Washington carefully pushed General Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto to move closer to occupy that middle space and keep Pakistan from swinging perilously towards the right. Her death will be felt as a severe blow to US interests in Pakistan and in the region. Pakistan, it would be fair, to predict, is now in for very turbulent times.”

Family’s vigil

Garhi Khuda Bux awaits another Bhutto,’ said Dawn on its front page, noting the cloud over succession and counting the number of family members accommodated in the family graveyard after violent deaths: “It (the assassination) removed from the scene the last remaining bearer from her family of the political legacy of her father, former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who was executed, also in Rawalpindi, on April 5, 1979 by the then-military ruler Gen Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq following a controversial conspiracy-to-murder conviction. Her youngest brother Shahnawaz Bhutto was found mysteriously dead on July 18, 1985 while living in exile in a French Riviera apartment while his only other brother, Murtaza Bhutto, was killed in a mysterious shooting outside his home in Karachi on Sept 20, 1996. Bhutto’s mother, Nusrat, who led the PPP for some years after Gen Zia toppled Mr Bhutto in a 1977 coup, has been very ill in recent years and has been living in Dubai with her daughter. Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari never seemed prepared for a leadership role despite being elected to parliament and being a minister in her cabinet during the last of her two short-lived tenures as prime minister, while younger sister, Sanam, has not engaged in politics.”

... contd.