Bilawal
NAUDERO, Pakistan (Reuters):
Benazir Bhutto's party appointed her son and her husband to succeed the slain Pakistani opposition leader yesterday and the party said it would take part in a January 8 election as Bhutto would have wanted.
But a senior official of the former ruling party said the election was likely to be delayed for up to eight weeks.
Bhutto's assassination in a suicide attack last Thursday has stoked violence and thrown into doubt the election, deepening a crisis in the important U.S. ally against terrorism as it struggles to emerge from military rule.
Bilawal, an Oxford law student, is Bhutto's 19-year-old son. He will lead the party as chairman with his father, Asif Ali Zardari, who is to be co-chairman.
Zardari said the party would take part in the election as his assassinated wife would have wanted.
"Despite this dangerous situation, we will go for elections, according to her will and thinking," Zardari told a news conference at the Bhutto family home in Naudero in the south of the country after a party meeting.
Bilawal, introduced at the news conference as Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, said the party's long struggle for democracy would continue with new vigour. "My mother always said 'democracy is the best revenge'," he said.
Possible election delays
Earlier, a senior official of the party that backs President Pervez Musharraf and ruled until a caretaker government was set up last month, said a postponement of the election was increasingly likely because of the turmoil that erupted after Bhutto's killing.
"It seems more than likely that elections will be delayed," the official Tariq Azim Khan told Reuters. He said he expected a six- to eight-week postponement.
The party can expect to pick up a sympathy vote after Bhutto's killing and its core support would remain for now, even though Bilawal would return to university and the fact that Zardari, like Bhutto, was tainted by corruption accusations, political analysts said.
Supporters of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto light candles next to her portrait during a ceremony at the site of her assassination in Rawalpindi yesterday. - Reuters
