Political turmoil in Pakistan deepened on Sunday as Benazir Bhutto’s son Bilawal, a 19-year-old student at Oxford, was surprisingly chosen to succeed the slain opposition leader as chairman of Pakistan’s largest party reports the Financial Times.
But the teenager will initially be only a figurehead, with his controversial father, Asif Ali Zardari, set to lead the Pakistan People’s party as co-chairman into elections expected to be delayed beyond the planned date next month.
Bhutto’s assassination last Thursday plunged the nation into a profound political crisis, deepening international anxiety over the spread of militant extremism, the security of the country’s arsenal of atomic weapons and the possibility of a new partition of Pakistan along its tense ethnic faultlines.
The PPP said it would participate in forthcoming elections, which were due to be held on January 8. Leaders of the ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-i-Azam), which backs President Pervez Musharraf, said they were likely to be delayed by up to four months.
Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, meanwhile,. decided to reverse its earlier decision to boycott the elections after Bhutto’s party said it would participate.
Tariq Azim, information secretary of the ruling PML (Q), said the vote would lose credibility if it were held as scheduled, with Bhutto’s party in mourning. He said he expected the country’s Election Commission to announce a delay within 24 hours. Mr Zardari Sr said that Bilawal, like his two younger sisters, would henceforth take his mother’s name, styling himself Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. A first-year history student, the teenager has lived outside Pakistan since 1999. He is to return to his studies and it is not clear when he will return to an active role in Pakistan.
Read it here: Bhutto’s Son and Husband to lead Party