Long live Bhutto!

Benazir Bhutto is dead, but her followers claim her spirit lives on. Hélène Frade and Paul Barber talked to those who think her husband and son can lead her party to victory in the upcoming elections – and to those who do not.

After she lashed out at Pakistan’s enemies one last time in a fiery speech, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on Dec. 27, 2007 in Rawalpindi.

Her death leaves the Pakistan Peoples Party without a leader, but Bhutto had prepared for the possibility of assassination and had set out her wishes in a last will and testament. Asif Ali Zardari, her husband, and her 19-year-old son Bilawal, will jointly lead the PPP into the upcoming elections.

In Karachi’s impoverished Lyari neighbourhood, a PPP stronghold, the residents are grieving. Many people here think responsibility for the assassination lies with the government of President Pervez Musharraf, not Islamic extremists as the government claims.

Further north, angry supporters come to visit the grave where the former prime minister and her father, who was also murdered, are buried. “We will avenge the Bhuttos. None of those who assassinated the Bhuttos will escape”, one supporter told FRANCE 24.

Asif Ali Zardari, the PPP’s new co-chairman, says the death of his wife will not stop her political action. “The enemies of democracy have always thought that killing a Bhutto would make them able to beat the Pakistan Peoples Party… But history proves that every time a PPP leader was murdered, the party came back stronger”, he said after his wife’s death.

Supporters of Musharraf, however, say the PPP is corrupt. “You know the Bhuttos were implicated in many corrupt affairs,” says Altaf Hussein Unar, a Pakistan Muslim League candidate. “They’re still wanted in Switzerland. There’s a case against Zardari. All of the PPP leaders are corrupt.”

Not everybody within the PPP supports the Bhuttos. Some accuse them of betraying the heritage of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Benazir’s father, who promised the population “food, clothing, and shelter.”

The general election, postponed until next February, will show whether Pakistan can let its population choose democratically between entrenched factions – and answer its frustrations.