KARACHI, Oct 17(AFP): His children wear headbands with Benazir Bhutto's picture, but Abdul Raziq has not come to pay any ordinary tribute to the former Pakistani premier-he has doused them and himself in petrol.
"I love Benazir and I will burn us all if the government does not back down," the wild-eyed 40-year-old labourer says after authorities in Karachi ordered pro-Bhutto billboards in the city to be torn down.
His sons Rajaba Ali and Ali Raza, aged four and six, weep as they are drenched in the flammable liquid while daughters Rakhshanda, seven, and Iqra, 10, look bewildered as a crowd cheers outside the Karachi press club.
Eventually senior members from Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) who had been holding a press conference inside the building intervene, taking a cigarette lighter from Raziq, and the family are led off.
Even if there is a whiff of stage management to go with the petrol fumes, the scene nevertheless raises questions about the personality cult that surrounds Bhutto, her late father Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and their party.
This port city of 12 million people, Pakistan's economic hub, has been decked with countless posters of Bhutto ahead of her planned homecoming Thursday from eight years in exile.
Almost every single lamppost on the 10-kilometre (six-mile) road from the airport to the city centre has an array of PPP flags. Party supporters danced wildly in the traffic Tuesday night as they celebrated.
In another part of Karachi, a parched looking Mohammad Ashraf Raza, 35, pedals a bicycle adorned with Bhutto posters in the party's signature red, green and black.
'Cult of Bhutto' peaks ahead of return to Pakistan
FE Team | Published: October 18, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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