KARACHI, 23 February — Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, living abroad for nearly three years now, “will be back in Pakistan sooner than anticipated,” a Pakistan People’s Party leader said in Karachi yesterday. Speculations as to whether she will be able to take part in the elections, due later this year, have been on for quite some time, but nothing categorical was said from the party so far.
However, one of her close aides yesterday confirmed to Arab News that he had a meeting with her earlier this week along with a number of others like the party’s acting chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim, and the organization’s Sindh unit president Nisar Khuhro.
“It was basically a social call, not a party meeting, but I can say with authority that, yes, she will be returning to Pakistan well in time for the elections. We want her in our midst to guide the party on election strategy, and lead it to its destined role,” said Raza Rabbani, PPP’s acting secretary-general, on return home the same day.
Rabbani also said that she will contest the elections. “She is the undisputed leader of the masses. She wants to be with her people, to share their joy and their sorrows. She has been denied the right to be in her country. The regime now ruling Pakistan has done everything to block her way to the role which history has chosen for her. She is not going to be deterred by oppression or threats of oppression. She will be returning home soon,” Rabbani asserted.
He said that the party will take part in the elections “wholeheartedly”, and “we are ready for that”. Polls in Pakistan are due in October but can be advanced by a month or so. The government is yet to announce the schedule, but it has set the machinery in motion to complete the exercise in time.
Asked about the fate of her husband Asif Zardari, in jail since 1996, Rabbani disclosed that his bail application in the latest case, filed by the National Accountability Bureau, is fixed for Feb. 28, and “we hope that he will be a free man very soon.”
In the meantime, the party’s central coordinator for human rights desk, Ms. Fauzia Wahab has sent a letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson drawing her attention to what she called “the inhuman treatment meted out to political activists in Pakistan,” and asking her to “reprimand the Pakistani government for using strong arm tactics against its citizens.”
She particularly referred to an incident in the Punjab city of Sialkot, where a peaceful rally of PPP ladies was baton-charged by the police. Fifteen people were injured in that incident and fifty political activists were arrested.
