Benazir's memory looms over Pak polls
For one day, Benazir Bhutto lived again - at least in the hearts of her fervent supporters.
The two-time former prime minister's popularity was as buoyant as ever yesterday as her widower Asif Ali Zardari won Pakistan's presidency, less than nine months after she was killed in a gun-and-bomb attack.
Zardari's landslide victory turned into a posthumous tribute to Benazir. Her portrait was everywhere, waved by her teary-eyed daughters in the National Assembly and clutched by supporters inside and outside the national and provincial legislatures.
Pakistan People's Party leaders and workers at the Baluchistan provincial assembly gallery chanted "Long live Benazir!" and "BB is alive, BB is alive!" On a busy road in downtown Karachi, supporters danced to traditional drum beats, shouting "Benazir is eternal!"
Information Minister Sherry Rehman called it a historic day with a tidal wave of support for both democracy and the People's Party.
"We have seen the legacy of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto come alive once again in the voice of the people through the four provinces, the Senate and the National Assembly of Pakistan," Rehman said.
"The candle of democracy lit by her with her martyrdom is still kindling."
Certainly, Zardari didn't win the election solely on the coattails of his late wife, who retained a large following even while spending years in exile - accused, like her husband, of corruption.
Huge crowds staged a massive party in the streets of Karachi to greet her return home last October, only for 150 to die in a suicide attack that narrowly missed Benazir herself.
In the chaos after assassins finally caught up with her in December, Zardari took over the People's Party, demonstrating a political cunning that took many people by surprise.
He survived the defection of a coalition partner and orchestrated President Pervez Musharraf's resignation with threats of impeachment.
Throughout the campaign, Benazir's memory was constantly brought up.
Her portraits and banners with her name dominated rallies, and she became an icon for change in a society restless after years of military rule and divided into a poverty-stricken mass and a tiny, self-serving elite.
The political legacy inherited by Zardari stretches back another generation.
Benazir's own popularity was based on that of her father, former president and prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who founded the People's Party.
Benazir took over the party leadership when her father was hanged in 1979 following a military coup, then led it to election victory.
And the family dynasty that preaches democracy is set to continue: Benazir's oldest son, following in his mother's footsteps by studying at Oxford University, has been earmarked to succeed his father as party chief.
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