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del.icio.usRiots bring Pakistan to a halt
Eagle news services
KARACHI, Pakistan - At least 40 dead in unrest that has city streets empty
Nationwide rioting brought life in Pakistan to a standstill Saturday and forced government officials to consider delaying next month's elections, as the country continued to be riven with discord over Thursday's killing of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Bhutto left a last will and testament that maps out the future for her political party and who should lead it in her absence, her husband, Asif Zardari, disclosed on Saturday.
The document will be presented to her Pakistan People's Party today. It's expected to include her preference for who should lead the party in her absence. Zardari himself would be a highly controversial contender. Their son Bilawal would win a huge amount of goodwill, but is still a teenager, and Zardari appeared to rule him out on Saturday.
"He's too young. He's 19 years old," Zardari said.
Zardari said he opened the letter himself only on Saturday. Its contents will be read to an emergency meeting of the party today by Bilawal, a student at Britain's prestigious Oxford University, where his mother also studied.
Longer term, it's widely predicted that Bilawal Bhutto will take over leadership of the party, Pakistan's most popular political machine, which has always been led by a Bhutto.
In the aftermath of Bhutto's assassination, the death toll from the violence climbed above 40, with many residents staying indoors out of fear and others venturing out to torch government buildings or to do battle with police firing tear gas.
The unrest turned streets in this normally frenetic city -- Pakistan's largest -- into empty expanses of asphalt. Dozens of burned-out cars and buses lay by the sides of the roads, evidence of night-time mobs that roamed the city in defiance of a heavy security presence that now includes patrols of army soldiers in addition to police.
Food shortages were reported in some areas, and a nearly complete shutdown of gas stations and other shops brought business to a virtual halt. With a large percentage of the population idle and angry, there was anxiety Saturday that the violence could worsen.
Pakistanis were scheduled to go to the polls on Jan. 8, but with the nation on edge, the election commission was expected to convene an emergency meeting Monday to make a decision over whether to postpone the long-awaited vote.
The elections, which will determine who controls parliament and shares power with President Pervez Musharraf, have been seen internationally and domestically as a critical test of Musharraf's willingness to move the country back toward democracy. In addition to the concerns about violence marring the vote, opposition groups have long said they believe that Musharraf and his allies plan to rig the polls.
Contributing: Washington Post, McClatchy Newspapers
