Pakistan Views

Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) president, Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan said that his not being able to pay respect to Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto by appearing at her last abode was like a mountain of shock in his heart, which he felt greatly relieved of by offering ‘Fateha’ at the tomb, following his arrival here today after his release from the confinement.
Accompanied by lawyers and members of the civil society, Aitzaz Ahsan offered ‘Fateha’ at the tomb with tears rolling from his eyes, as he appeared completely overwhelmed by the sentiments.Talking to the media, Aitaz Ahsan said that although he has unloaded the burden of the mountain like shocks for not appearing at the tomb of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, but he was carrying a crucifix on his shoulders, which was a symbol of responsibility—a responsibility to serve the poor people and providing justice to the hapless. He said that there could be no democracy without justice and the country could not prosper. He also thanked the media, the people and the lawyers on this occasion and prayed for their solidarity forever.

Co-chairman PPP, Asif Ali Zardari on Monday maintained that the Parliament consisting of newly elected members would adopt a resolution calling for a probe into the martyrdom of Benazir under the supervision of United Nations.
Addressing a press conference at Bilawal House here, he said that PPP has set this as one of the two conditions before the like-minded parties.
The second condition is that the new Parliament should apologize and accept that the execution of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was a judicial murder he added.
Asif Zardari was of the view that most of the friends have agreed to these two conditions
He said the people will surely notice the difference between the performance of new government and the previous ones.

A top Taliban commander has been formally charged with plotting the murder of former premier Benazir Bhutto and declared an absconder Saturday, police said. Baitullah Mehsud, an al Qaeda-linked militant commander, based in the tribal area of South Waziristan, is accused by the government and the United States CIA of masterminding the assassination.
“We have submitted preliminary charges against Baitullah Mehsud in connection with Benazir Bhutto’s murder in an anti-terrorism court Rawalpindi,” a senior police official told AFP. “The court has declared Mehsud and four other suspects absconders in the case and issued non-bailable warrants for their arrest,” the official said but declined to give further details. Five other people have already been arrested in connection with the gun and suicide attack in Rawalpindi on December 27.
Bhutto was the target of militants because she had backed the government’s action against terrorists and was seen as pro-Western, according to investigators. Her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has demanded a UN probe rejecting the findings by British police that a lone assassin shot her but missed and then detonated explosives, which made her fatally smash her skull against her car.

Political allies of embattled President Pervez Musharraf are poised on edge of a crushing electoral defeat in crucial parliamentary elections, an exit poll and initial count showed after relatively peaceful balloting on Monday.
PML-Q ROUTED, PRO-MUSHARRAF CANDIDATES COME TUMBLING DOWN, ANP THUNDERS IN NWFP WHERE MMA SUFFERS HUMILIATION MQM IS GOING TO RETAIN STRANGLEHOLD OVER KARACHI: Bitter opponents of the isolated leader are seemingly heading towards a two-thirds majority in the vote for the National Assembly-which implies they can humiliate him with an impeachment.
But none of the main anti-Musharraf outfits-Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)-could secure a clear victory to form the government single handedly.
Opposition parties are, however, in a position now to undo steps Musharraf had taken after suspending the constitution and purging top judiciary last November.
Heads of both PPP and PML-N-Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif-have reportedly agreed in recent meetings not to give constitutional clearance to such actions of the President.
Musharraf is being aggressively blamed at home for killing own people in the US-led war on terror, and harshly criticised by rights groups abroad for the suppression of independent voices against his rule.
Parliamentary vote, for the first time in six years, was primarily being seen as referendum against the ex military chief who seized power in a bloodless coup eight years ago.
The defeat of some top leaders of Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q), a political party that associated with him to rule for past five years, including its president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, indicates that he must start thinking to leave now.
In an interview to a German Magazine soon after he declared emergency on November 3 last year, Musharraf himself said he would prefer resigning if opposition parties come to power after elections, exactly what has happened now.
Experts said the humiliation for these high ranking PML-Q politicians was primarily due to their association with the beleaguered leader.
There were conflicting accounts on what was the turn out of voters with official estimates putting it as high as 35 to 40 percent, but independent observers placing it under 25%. Close to half of registered voters in rural areas turned up to cast ballots. In urban localities, however, the proportion was less than 15% in some cases.
More than 80 million Pakistanis aged 18 or above were registered for Monday’s vote, that was also considered as the revival of democracy in the country after eight years of authoritarian rule by Musharraf. The polling day was dreaded but peaceful by and large after weeks of a bloody campaign that witnessed several attacks on election rallies including suicide bombings.
There were mounting fears a day earlier that al Qaeda-linked terrorists allegedly based in Pakistani lawlessness tribal regions bordering Afghanistan in west could strike to disrupt what they considered an un-Islamic exercise. But the day passed without any major hit. Less than a dozen people across the country were, however, killed in poll related violence, majority of them in Punjab province.
PML-N of former premier Nawaz Sharif and PPP of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto are appearing as the largest parties as per popular estimates of late. Both would have to seek power sharing between each other or with some other small regional groups to form governments in the center and in provinces. The power equation in two conservative provinces is also joined by religious and nationalists players.
In NWFP, Awami National Party (ANP) is ahead of all but PPP in Pushtoon majority southern district and PML-N in the extreme north was also in the race. A now-divided Islamic alliance called Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) that won majority in the conservative provinces on the back of anti-US sentiments after Afghan invasion by America a year earlier has almost been eliminated from power tussle.
HEAVYWEIGHTS FALL: Most horrible for Musharraf’s associates was the defeat of heavyweights of formerly ruling PML-Q including its president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain from both constituencies he was contesting in.
His cousin and former Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Ellahi was also reportedly not winning from all the constituencies he was fighting from. Minister sin former regime-Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Humayun Akhtar and Ijazul Haq-were also among those who had lost their parliamentary seats. Sheikh is a politician who has never lost since 1988 from his stronghold Rawalpindi city near Islamabad.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman, a top leader MMA, had lost his home constituency in Dera Ismail Khan district of NWFP. Over all in the province, Islamists who swept 2002 elections had been defeated completely by ANP and PPP. In non-Pushtoon northern belt (Hazara), however, PML-N emerged as largest party.
In Punjab, Nawaz Sharif and PPP won in northern and southern districts respectably. PPP also did well in its fiefdom of rural Sindh and shared gains with Muttahida Quomi Movement (MQM) in the urban centers including Karachi in the province. No party seems to have secured a clear victory in Balochistan.

The two accused in the Benazir Bhutto murder case have confessed committing the crime in the judicial court here on Wednesday.
Arrested recently from different areas of Rawalpindi, the suspects, Hasnain Gul and Rafaqat were produced before a Rawalpindi magestrate today
According to sources, both the accused recorded their confessional statements before the magistrate, after which they were sent to Adiala Jail Two other suspects Aitizaz Shah and Sherzaman are already in the custody of Rawalpindi police. The were arrested from Dera Ismael Khan

The peasants who gather round a life-size poster of Benazir Bhutto believe it will help resolve a tribal dispute and her party hopes such faith will translate into millions of votes. The martyred Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chairperson has become akin to a saint among people in her ancestral town of Larkana, ascribed with powers that most other candidates in next week’s elections can only dream of Larkana community leader Akhtar Mahoto said people not only bring verses by saints from the mystical Sufi strain of Islam to resolve local wrangles, now “the portrait of Benazir is also added because she commands such respect.” “At a recent meeting the participants agreed to settle a long-standing dispute with a pledge, before Benazir’s image, that they would not fight again,” Mahoto told AFP. “We consider these personalities as witness to our pledge and then swear on the Holy Quran to remain committed to our pledge,” he said. Benazir did not always have the same unifying power in life, as her martyrdom at a political rally in Rawalpindi on December 27 showed. But the two-term former prime minister nevertheless remained one of the only truly national leaders in a country riven by deep ethnic, religious, sectarian and political faultlines. Her Pakistan People’s Party is now counting on her to unite the country’s electorate against President Pervez Musharraf and also overcome some internal strife. Famously superstitious in life, Benazir’s new status in death chimes well with the folksy beliefs of the dustbowl farmers and warring clans in rural southern Sindh province, where she spent large parts of her childhood. It is also where she was buried after her martyrdom and her grave in the Bhutto family mausoleum in Ghari Khuda Bakhsh, has become a virtual shrine. During recent ceremonies to mark the 40th and final day of mourning for Benazir, women brought newborn babies to the five-domed tomb for her blessing. “This family of martyrs has always helped us. We believe their blessings for my grandson will make him successful,” said Shahida Bibi, 50, carrying her two-week-old grandson. Martyrs are certainly part of the growing Bhutto mythology. Benazir is buried alongside her father, ex-prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged in 1979, while her two brothers lie nearby. “I have watched people visit Shaheed Baba’s (Zulfiqar Bhutto’s) grave for years but after Benazir’s martyrdom this trend has become stronger,” said Karim Bakhsh Bhutto, an unrelated resident living near the tomb. “Benazir was a hope for us when she was alive and many of her followers have not yet lost that hope,” he said. Nor has her Pakistan People’s Party. “The sympathy element is very strong,” PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar told

Pakistan Peoples Party chairperson martyred Benazir Bhutto returned home knowing the names and cell phone numbers of her possible assassins, she wrote in a book finished just days before her martyrdom at a December election rally. Benazir wrote in “Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West,” to be released worldwide on Tuesday, that Pakistani officials told her four suicide bomber squads had been sent by Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud, Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza, and two militant groups to martyr her. “I had actually received from a sympathetic Muslim foreign government the names and cell numbers of designated assassins,” said Benazir, who accused President Pervez Musharraf of not doing enough to protect her or investigate the threats. Benazir said she sent a letter to President Musharraf before returning to her homeland in October in which she identified people in the Pakistani intelligence service whom she said would be responsible for her martyrdom. “I told him if I was assassinated by the militants it would be due to the sympathizers of the militants in his regime, who I suspected wanted to eliminate me and remove the threat I posed to their grip on power,” she wrote in the 318-page book published by News Corp.’s HarperCollins. Benazir survived a bomb attack — one of the deadliest in Pakistan’s history, killing at least 139 people — when she returned in October after an eight-year exile. But she was martyred after a bomb and gun attack at the end of a Dec. 27 rally ahead of planned Jan. 8 national elections. The polls are now due Feb. 18.

‘I WANTED TO REASSURE THEM’

“When I returned, I did not know whether I would live or die,” she wrote. “I said farewell to my children, husband, mother, staff, friends and family not knowing whether I would ever see their faces again. “I wanted to reassure them, but I also told them, ‘Remember: God gives life, and God takes life. I will be safe until my time is up,’” said Benazir. Musharraf’s government blamed al Qaeda for the martyrdom Benazir, a staunch supporter of the US-led campaign against militancy, but many Pakistanis suspect her other enemies, perhaps from within shadowy security agencies, were involved. After the first attempt on her life, Benazir wrote that “a cover-up seemed to be under way from the very first moments of the attack” that she said was “clearly meant to appear to be an al Qaeda-style suicide attack.” “In Pakistan things are almost never as they seem. There are always circles within circles, rarely straight lines. This was meant to look like the work of al Qaeda and the Taliban, and I do not doubt they were involved,” she said. “But the sophistication of the plan … suggested a larger conspiracy. Elements from within the Pakistani intelligence service had actually created the Taliban in the 1980s, and certain elements sympathized with al Qaeda ideologically and theologically. Some had recruited or worked for it,” she said. Benazir’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, has now become the de facto leader of his wife’s Pakistan People’s Party. Together with his son and two daughters, they wrote an afterword for BB’s book. “This book is about everything that those who martyred her could never understand: democracy, tolerance, rationality, hope, and, above all, the true message of Islam,” they wrote. “Or maybe they did understand these things and feared them, and thus feared her. She was the fanatics’ worst nightmare.”

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is formally commencing its election campaign from today (Saturday) after the forty-day mourning for Benazir Bhutto came to an end.
In this connection, PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari will address a public gathering in Thatta today; whereas, several public gatherings were organized in other areas in Sindh and Punjab.
Stringent security arrangements have been made for the public gathering in Thatta.
On this occasion, all the party candidates have been directed to speed up public canvassing campaign.

People’s Party (PPP) legal advisor Farooq H Naik Saturday said the PPP stance over Scotland Yard report on Benazir Bhutto’s murder would be issued after the consultation with PPP Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari and other party leaders.
Talking to Geo News, Farooq H Naik said the party has received the Scotland Yard report and it was a little discussed over with Asif Ali Zardari; however, the decision regarding its acceptance or rejection has not been taken.
Naik said the detailed discussions over the SY report with party co-chairman and other leaders are in progress and later on, the PPP standpoint would be issued.

A resolution, presented in the US Senate, demands for independent investigation into Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and holding of elections in Pakistan without any delay enabling the country to return towards democracy.
The resolution was presented by chairman foreign relations committee Joseph Biden with American presidential candidate of opposition party Democrats Barrack Obama and majority leader in the senate Harry Reid.
Joseph Biden said that the murder of Benazir Bhutto was a political thunderbolt and those Americans who knew Benazir Bhutto personally were shocked like the Pakistanis by her assassination. He said that Benazir sacrificed her life for maintaining democracy, moderateness and economic justice in Pakistan.
He further said that it should be discovered that who was behind this murder and who was responsible for that. The resolution said that in the wake of this horrible situation, Pakistan is facing constant severe threats, which is a grave concern not only for Pakistan but also for America.
Joseph Biden said that until the issue is not resolved no government in Pakistan could effectively focus on threats from al Qaeda and Taliban and for this reason this resolution has been presented in the senate. This was demanded from the government of Pakistan in the resolution to revert to democracy without any delay and ensure the holding of independent elections.