By Muhammad Najeeb, IANS
Islamabad : Pakistan may Tuesday put off the Jan 8 elections following former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination even as normalcy returned to the country after three days of widespread violence.
The Election Commission of Pakistan postponed from Monday to Tuesday its decision on whether to hold the parliamentary elections as scheduled in the wake of attacks on its offices, particularly in Sindh province.
The panel has asked its provincial and district officials to report about the law and order situation and the damages to election offices following the Dec 27 murder of Bhutto in Rawalpindi.
An ECP spokesman told journalists in Islamabad that they would assess the situation only after getting reports from its field offices. “It is likely the elections will be delayed by a few weeks,” another ECP official told IANS.
Normalcy, meanwhile, slowly returned to Pakistan after the death of 44 people in three days of widespread street violence that paralysed the country’s rail traffic and shut down offices and educational institutions across the country.
Long queues of vehicles were seen at petrol and gas stations that also opened Monday morning. Many vehicles were being pushed to the stations as they had run out of fuel on the streets, with fuel unavailable.
Attacks on private and government property began as thousands took to the streets after the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader was shot dead, blaming the government of President Pervez Musharraf for the murder.
The worst hit was the state-run Pakistan Railways.
Mobs torched 72 train coaches and 18 railway stations in Sindh, Bhutto’s home province. Four railway stations were damaged.
Violence was reported from all parts of Pakistan including Lahore, Rawalpindi, Karachi and Peshawar.
According to officials, 173 bank offices were gutted and 26 damaged, 158 government offices torched and 42 damaged, 26 petrol stations set on fire, 370 vehicles burnt and 61 damaged, and 765 shops razed.
Rail and road links between Sindh and the rest of the country remained cut off for three days. The government put the losses in the violence at billions of rupees. A huge amount of cash was also looted from ATM machines. Several shops selling expensive items were broken into.
Even Monday a few offices of international organisations remained closed.
The government has ordered that educational institutions will remain shut till Jan 3. Some private institutions have announced that they will reopen only after the elections.
The Karachi stock market that opened Monday after three days crashed. The KSE-100 index was down by more than 700 points in the opening session in one of the sharpest falls in memory.
“This is a historic fall and is reflective of the unrest in the entire country,” said Waheed Jan, a broker based in Islamabad.
Bhutto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari, named the PPP co-chairman, urged the people to calm down. He said that “miscreants and anti-social elements” had taken advantage of the situation to loot and plunder.
The Pakistani media reported Monday that Zardari was expected to control PPP although nominally his son Bilawal, an Oxford student, has been named the head of the party.
But mystery over Bhutto’s killing deepened after a pro-Taliban militant Monday demanded an independent enquiry into the killing, calling her death “a national tragedy” and implying that Islamic hardliners were not involved.
Officials say the body of Bhutto may need to be exhumed for an autopsy if the government allows international experts to probe the assassination in the wake of demands by the PPP.
“No investigation will be possible without an autopsy of the body,” said an official, adding that the government was in touch with global experts who insist on an “expert autopsy report” to start investigations.
Musharraf said Sunday said that the government would consider a probe by international experts as the PPP had announced a three-member team to talk to the UN to force its hand to do so.
The government insists that Bhutto died after fracturing her head when she struck the sunroof lever of her Toyota Land Cruiser. But eyewitnesses and PPP leaders say a bullet hit her, forcing her fall into the SUV. A suicide bomber then exploded at the venue, killing about 20 people and causing mayhem.