ISLAMABAD (AFP) – Pakistan indicated Saturday it would delay January elections because of turmoil caused by the death of Benazir Bhutto, as a bitter dispute erupted over how the opposition leader was killed.
Violent protests and looting which have left at least 38 people dead and 53 injured have rocked the nation of 160 million Muslims since Bhutto was killed at a campaign rally in the northern city of Rawalpindi on Thursday.
The United States and Western powers have urged Pakistan to commit to the democratic process in the aftermath of her death, but leading opposition figure Nawaz Sharif has said his party will boycott the polls.
Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, which has accused the government of trying to cover up the real circumstances of her death, has said it will decide Sunday whether to take part in the January 8 parliamentary elections.
Pakistan’s interior ministry moved to quash the cover-up claims, saying its account of how Bhutto died was based on the facts and offering to exhume her body for inquiry.
The crisis-hit country’s election commission said it would hold an urgent meeting on Monday to decide the vote’s fate but indicated a delay was possible.
“All activities pertaining to pre-poll arrangements, including printing of ballot papers and logistics as well as training of polling personnel, have been adversely affected,” it said in a statement.
In some places, the commission said, the security situation was “not conducive” to holding the elections which Bhutto had come home from exile in October to contest.
It cited the death of an election candidate in a bomb blast and said election commission offices in nine districts had been set ablaze and voter lists “reduced to ashes.”
The polls would lack credibility without the participation of Bhutto’s PPP, which has been infuriated by the government’s official account of their leader’s death.
Early reports said Bhutto had been shot before a bomb exploded nearby. However the government said she had no gunshot or shrapnel wounds.
It said the opposition leader died after smashing her head on her car’s sunroof as she tried to duck.
The ministry also blamed Al-Qaeda, saying intelligence services had intercepted a call from Baitullah Mehsud, considered the extremist group’s top leader for Pakistan.
Senior members of Bhutto’s party dismissed the government’s version of events, calling it lies.
“There was a bullet wound I saw that went in from the back of her head and came out the other side,” Bhutto’s spokeswoman Sherry Rehman, who was involved in washing her body for burial, told AFP.
“This is ridiculous, dangerous nonsense because it is a cover-up of what actually happened.”
Bhutto was an outspoken critic of Al-Qaeda-linked militants blamed for scores of bombings in Pakistan and she had received threats.
But she had also accused elements from the intelligence services of involvement in a suicide attack on her rally in October that left 139 dead and which she only narrowly escaped.
Maulana Omar, a spokesman for alleged Al-Qaeda kingpin Mehsud, denied involvement in the attack and expressed grief over Bhutto’s death.
“This is a conspiracy of the government, army and intelligence agencies,” said the spokesman from Waziristan, a lawless tribal region where Al-Qaeda leaders, including possibly Osama bin Laden, are alleged to be hiding.
One day after Bhutto was laid to rest at her family’s mausoleum in southern Sindh province, Pakistan was virtually paralysed with most people unable to buy food or petrol, with all shops, fuel stations, banks and offices closed down.
The streets of the country’s main cities — Karachi, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore and Peshawar — were largely empty, and in many places there was evidence of violence and looting.
President Pervez Musharraf ordered security chiefs to take firm action against rioters, and the interior ministry estimated that damage ran into tens of millions of dollars.
“Elements who wish to exploit the situation by looting and plundering must be dealt with firmly,” the Associated Press of Pakistan news agency quoted Musharraf as saying.
“Some elements of criminal mentality have taken undue advantage of the situation,” interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema told a news conference.
However, Cheema said the situation was “satisfactory” on Saturday, partly due to the army’s presence in several hotspots.
“The situation is getting back to normal rapidly and we hope that in a day or so life will return to normal in the country,” he added.
Analysts warned that nuclear-armed Pakistan was facing its biggest crisis since Bangladesh split from the country more than 35 years ago.
“We are heading towards a very uncertain phase of politics which has the potential to plunge the country into a state of anarchy,” Hasan Askari, former head of political science at Lahore’s Punjab University, told AFP.
The White House Saturday declined to comment on any delay of Pakistan’s elections and urged Islamabad to thoroughly investigate Bhutto’s killing.
“The elections should be free and fair,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.
“But as for the timing, this will be something that the Pakistani authorities will have to determine.”
Pakistan’s interior ministry has rejected the need for external help to probe Bhutto’s death.
Educated at Harvard and Oxford, Bhutto first took the helm of Pakistan in 1988.
She was ousted in 1990 amid corruption allegations but was premier again from 1993 to 1996.
She was buried next to her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a former premier hanged by the military government in 1979.