Bhutto's husband could play kingmaker

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Farhan Bokhari, FT Syndication Service
KARACHI: Looming over Friday's funeral of Benazir Bhutto is the question of who will rise to replace her at the helm of the PPP and what impact her death would have on the party's fortunes in the January 8 elections, should they go ahead as planned.
"For the moment, the PPP faces a major crisis," said one party leader on Friday. "It has to decide exactly how to fill the leadership void and also retain the support of the masses across the grass roots of Pakistani politics."
The move to appoint formally a successor to Bhutto is unlikely to begin before next week. But analysts said Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's husband, will play a key role as kingmaker or leader.
"The structure of the PPP is such that it has been built up as a party where the Bhutto family had a key role. For the foreseeable future, Asif Zardari's role cannot be ignored," said Shafqat Mahmood, a former Bhutto aide.
Thousands of activists from Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's party converged Friday on a remote part of the southern Sindh province for her funeral amid memories of the heavy price paid by her family in the country's turbulent history.
Bhutto's final resting place - her family's ancestral cemetery in the village of Garhi Khuda Bukhsh outside the Bhutto hometown of Larkana - is also that of her late father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the former prime minister and founder of the PPP, and her two brothers, Murtaza and Shah Nawaz.
Mr Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's husband, flew into Pakistan on Thursday night from Dubai with the couple's three children. He is a controversial figure. Although Ms Bhutto defended him to the end, corruption allegations against Mr Zardari were at the centre of investigations launched in both Pakistan and abroad into the couple's business dealings.
Besides Mr Zardari, Amin Fahim, the most senior PPP leader after Bhutto, and Aitzaz Ahsan, the charismatic lawyer and former interior minister, are expected to be the leading contenders.
With Bhutto's death many of her supporters have predicted the end of the Bhutto clan's high-profile presence in Pakistani politics. "The Bhuttos all die young," Khuda Buksh, a Karachi construction worker, said on Friday with tears rolling down his cheeks. "Benazir Bhutto's death is unique because this is the end of the Bhutto name in Pakistani politics. There are no more Bhuttos left to lead this country."
It is not entirely true that the dynasty is finished. Mr Zardari and Bhutto have three children, the eldest of whom, their 19-year-old son, is a student at Oxford. But Bilawal Zardari carries his father's surname and has spent a large part of his life outside Pakistan.
Distraught party leaders have refused to weigh in on the leadership question or whether the PPP would even contest elections set for January 8, insisting a three-day mourning period for Bhutto must first pass.
The personality cult surrounding the Bhutto family notwithstanding, other analysts believe the party has an assured role in the future of Pakistani politics, with or without a member of the Bhutto clan leading it.
"There is a large number of people in Pakistan who seek to have a left-of-centre party and the PPP fulfils that need. That space occupied by the PPP will still be there," said Ayesha Jalal, professor of history at Tufts University in the US and a scholar on South Asia.
Bhutto's father launched the PPP in the 1960s as an alternative to more conservative groups such as the Pakistan Muslim League - one faction of which is headed by Nawaz Sharif, the other prominent opposition leader - or regional parties dedicated to provincial nationalism.
Offering "Islamic socialism" as the guiding principle for running the economy and promising all Pakistanis roti (bread), kapra (clothing) and makaan (housing), the PPP grew into a national political party in the 1970s.
But western diplomats warned that the jury was still out on the PPP's future and what short-term role it and its supporters would play in the run-up to elections.
Clashes between protesters and security forces could create more violence, they said. "The more that the government relies on using force against the PPP, the more you will see opinions hardening within this party," said one western diplomat in Islamabad. "It is important for the government of President Pervez Musharraf to keep the PPP engaged in mainstream politics."
But, PPP leaders warned that it was impossible to enter into immediate reconciliation with Mr Musharraf's government, whom many of Bhutto's supporters blame for her death. "None of our people will [pay] heed to calls for conciliation right now. There is so much anger that the idea of an engagement with Musharraf will not be accepted," said one party leader.