Pakistan gears up for Bhutto's death anniversary

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-25 07:46

Supporters of slain Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto light candles next to her portrait during a ceremony ahead of her first death anniversary in Islamabad December 24, 2008. Bhutto was assassinated on December 27, 2007 after a public rally in Rawalpindi. [Agencies]

Thousands of Pakistanis are expected to flock to the tomb of Benazir Bhutto on Saturday to honor their beloved former premier, one year after her assassination in a suicide attack.

A national holiday has been declared to allow Pakistan's 160 million people to pay tribute to the Oxford-educated Bhutto, the first woman to lead a Muslim nation, whose murder at an election rally shocked the world.

Bhutto, 54, was campaigning to return to power, two months after returning to Pakistan from exile, when she and 20 others were killed in a gun and suicide attack in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007. The killing threw the world's only nuclear-armed Islamic nation into chaos, sparking violence and leading to months of political turmoil that ended in September when Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, claimed the presidency.

"She carried on her shoulders the dream of the people for a prosperous, united and peaceful Pakistan," Zardari said in a message read to members of his wife's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) in London at the weekend.

"The dictators and assassins may have removed her physically but they will never succeed in erasing her thoughts and memories now deeply etched in the hearts of the people of Pakistan."

On Saturday, thousands of police will be deployed to protect Zardari as he leads mourners at Bhutto's grave in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, in rural southern Pakistan, while tributes will also be paid in cities nationwide.

A special security wall has been erected around the mausoleum as part of a raft of precautions taken to safeguard the president.

"We expect hundreds of thousands of people to come here to pay their respects to their beloved leader," Shafqat Soomro, a local PPP leader in southern Sindh province and an organiser of the graveside event, said.

"Some are coming on foot. We expect them to begin arriving on Wednesday night," he said, adding that more than 7,000 police would be on hand.

Sindh's home minister Zulfiqar Mirza has warned of the possibility of violence linked to the Bhutto commemorations, but provincial spokesman Waqar Mehdi said authorities had taken appropriate steps.

"We are taking all possible measures to avoid terrorism at the anniversary of the death of our leader, who was also a victim of such a savage act," Mehdi said.

More than 50 suicide attacks have rocked Pakistan in the year since Bhutto's death, including a devastating truck bombing at the luxury Marriott Hotel in the capital Islamabad that killed at least 60 people.

The country's reverence for Bhutto one year on continues unabated - television programs about her life have been running for days, and the government will soon issue a 10-rupee coin bearing her portrait.

However, Pakistan's population remains dogged by Taliban-linked violence, a stumbling economy, spiraling food prices and political back-biting.

Political analyst Rasul Baksh Rais believes life in Pakistan would have been better had the two-time former premier lived to lead Pakistan for a third time.

"Many of the problems would have been settled if she was alive," Rais said.

AFP