All power to the people. That seemed to be the mood on the streets of Karachi when Benazir Bhutto landed here to an unprecedented welcome, ending her self-imposed exile spanning eight years. It was unprecedented because Karachi, though Bhutto’s hometown, is not her party’s stronghold. The city has been ruled by her arch-rivals, who have taken turns at power. These include Altaf Hussain’s MQM, the ruling Muslim League and the rightwing Jamaat-i-Islami. Bhutto’s People’s Party has, at best, managed to get only a couple of seats from this city of 15 million in the past.

But Thursday was a historic day by all accounts. It saw the coming together of the urban and rural Sindhis, Punjabis, Pathans, Seraikis, the Baloch, Mohajirs, Kashmiris, Makranis, and what have you, in the great ethnic mix of Pakistan. An affirmation that the People’s Party still manages to cut across all ethnicities, social classes, faiths, and so on. There was no distinction between BB’s supporters as the sweltering sea of people waved party flags, flooding the city’s main artery — Sharae Faisal — waiting for their leader to arrive. The melting pot included the minorities in large numbers: Hindus, Christians, the scheduled castes. The mighty feudal landlords and the city socialites were seen rubbing shoulders with dispossessed peasants from the rural hinterland, the industrial workers and the urban jobless.

The spectacle presented a sharp contrast to Nawaz Sharif’s September 10 homecoming in Islamabad, where not only the people at large were conspicuous by their absence but even those holding high offices within his faction of the Muslim League were prevented from coming to the airport. It’s easy to stop a few hundred people from greeting their leader, but what do you do when hundreds of thousands turn up on the occasion? You just sit back and watch. That’s precisely what the MQM and its ruling partner the, Sindh Muslim League, did on Thursday.

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