The delay hardly came as a surprise. Many hold the Musharraf-led government responsible for Bhutto’s death, either directly or because of negligence. The sympathy vote for her party, given that she was killed just twelve days before the elections, would have swept it to victory. The PPP’s electoral alliance with PML-N also challenges the PML-Q, the “king’s party” that has ruled the country with the military’s backing for the past five years. The rise of public anger against the PML-Q, as evident in its electoral posters and banners being torn down and damaged all over the country, made it clear that the party would have a hard time at the polls.
Meanwhile, there is great public indignation at how the government dealt with the assassination — quickly hosing down the scene of the crime, just as it had done after the October 18 attack on Bhutto’s welcome procession, then claiming that “Al-Qaeda” carried out the attack, followed by the ridiculous “sun-roof” theory that the caretaker prime minister had to subsequently apologise for.
The attempt to pin the blame on Al-Qaeda omits the historic and widely known linkage between these “agencies” and the “Taliban” or Al-Qaeda that Benazir herself believed was still alive, a sort of “state within a state”. This linkage has caused great damage not only to the world but also to us here in Pakistan. Following the first attempt on her life the day she returned to Pakistan after almost nine years of self-exile on October 18, Benazir herself accused that these “remnants of Zia”, as she put it, attempted to kill her. In an email made public since her death, she named three people from among these remnants as being behind this attempt: an intelligence chief and two political leaders from the “king’s party”.
... contd.
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