Thousands gather as Bhutto's husband holds election rally

Tens of thousands of Benazir Bhutto supporters gathered in a southern Pakistan town today as her widowed husband prepared to address the first major campaign rally by her opposition party since her assassination in a suicide attack six weeks ago.

Striving to fill the void left by the former prime minister, Asif Ali Zardari will urge followers of her Pakistan People’s Party or PPP to push for victory in February 18 parliamentary elections that are meant to restore democracy after years of military rule.

Party faithful mobilised at towns along the 70-mile route from Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, and travelled to the historic town of Thatta for the rally. Police said about 2,000 officers were deployed to secure the sports stadium where Zardari would make his speech later today.

About 30,000 people gathered inside and tens of thousands more emerged from hundreds of buses and trucks festooned with PPP flags that crammed the road to the stadium. It surpassed the attendance of any rally in the election campaign so far.

“We will avenge the blood of Benazir. We don’t have bombs. We are not terrorists, but we have political power and we will capitalise on this political power to avenge the death of Benazir,” said Haji Jaffar, 75, a retired teacher and People’s Party member.

“The passion and love for the PPP has increased after Benazir’s assassination. The people who were not with us yesterday are with us now,” he said.

The PPP is widely expected to benefit from a sympathy vote over the liberal-minded leader’s December 27 killing in the garrison city of Rawalpindi - an attack President Pervez Musharraf’s government has blamed on a Taliban militant commander.

But it remains to be seen if Zardari can unite the party and dispel public doubts over his track record. He was labelled “Mr 10%” over his alleged pilfering of state funds and demands for kickbacks during Bhutto’s two administrations in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Pir Bakhsh, a 24-year old labourer, said that Zardari’s reputation was not good but that love for Benazir “compels us to attend this rally.”

A vast portrait of Bhutto, alongside a picture of her 19-year old son Bilawal, dominated the backdrop of the stage where Zardari would speak. Bilawal, currently studying at Oxford University, was appointed party chairman after her death, but Zardari is the de facto leader.

Police and party volunteers conducted a three-tier search of people who passed through scanners and were then body-searched before entering the stadium at Thatta, which in centuries past was a regional capital dominating the Indus River delta and is now a World Heritage site.

The rally comes a day after Scotland Yard released its findings that a bomb, not a bullet, killed Bhutto as she left her last election rally. That supported the conclusion of the Pakistan government, but is still disputed by Bhutto’s party, which maintains she was shot.

The British investigators concluded that Bhutto suffered a fatal head injury when the force of a blast from a suicide bomber hurled her against a lever on the roof of her armoured vehicle.