Bhutto supporters prepare for her return
PAKISTAN: Supporters of former Pakistani premier Benazir
Bhutto are making fevered preparations for her homecoming — despite
political turmoil surrounding her return and growing opposition within
her own party.
Bhutto is set to land in her powerbase of Karachi on Thursday after
spending eight years in self-imposed exile in Dubai and London, having
fled to avoid corruption charges arising from her two terms in power.
Thousands of followers from her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) are
expected to greet her. The port city of 12 million people is bedecked
with posters of the Islamic world’s iconic first female prime minister.
Vans filled with party workers have been racing around Karachi for
days with pro-Bhutto songs blaring from radios.
Huge billboards with her face have appeared atop crowded tenement
buildings.
“We are waiting for her because she is the only genuine leader of
Pakistan,” college student Mohammad Shahid told AFP as he fixed posters
to a wall in Lyari, Karachi’s most pro-Bhutto neighbourhood.
Loyalists have also established scores of camps to mobilise the
masses, as they did when she ended her last period in exile in 1986,
seven years after dictator Zia-ul Haq executed her father, premier
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
Bilawal House, the family home in Karachi, and her father’s tomb in
the ancestral village of Larkana some 400 kilometres (250 miles) away
have both been extensively renovated.
Bhutto is expected to travel to Larkana in the days after her
arrival, party officials said.
In a country where politics is dominated by both bloodlines and
bloodshed, some supporters have shown devotion in unusual ways. Last
week party workers at a rally lit candles soaked in their own blood.
“I love the PPP, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir because my father
and grandfather did too,” Arsalan Ali, a 13-year-old schoolboy, said at
one of the party’s camps.
While Bhutto can count of generations of support in Karachi, her
return remains fraught with difficulty.
Most of the problems can be traced to her proposed power-sharing deal
with the country’s military ruler, President Pervez Musharraf, a pact
that has been quietly backed by the United States.
Bhutto faces a legal headache after the Supreme Court on Friday
agreed to take up appeals against a government amnesty on the corruption
deal that smooths the path for an alliance with Musharraf.
Karachi, Sunday, AFP |