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Benazir returns to huge welcome

— Photo: AP

HOME SWEET HOME: The former Pakistani Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, prays as she arrives in Karachi on Thursday, ending eight years of self-imposed exile.

KARACHI: The former Pakistan Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, ended eight years of self-imposed exile on Thursday with a massive show of people power in the country’s largest city, reinforcing her claim as the leader of the nation’s largest democratic party.

Lakhs of supporters and activists of her Pakistan People’s Party crowded the roads leading to the Karachi airport to greet their leader, converting a 7-km stretch up to the airport into a sea of the party’s green, red and black colours on flags, posters, clothes and caps.

Tens of thousands broke through the police barriers to reach the terminal where she landed, erupting into wild cheers of “jiye Bhutto” (long live Bhutto) and “Wazir-e-Azam Benazir” as she emerged on top of a converted container truck at about 3.30 p.m., about two hours after her flight landed, to begin an epic journey to her home city.

Flanked by senior leaders of her party, Ms. Bhutto did not use the bullet-proof shield fitted on the truck and waved enthusiastically to the dancing and singing crowds.

Their numbers were a tribute to the PPP’s strength as a political party that had kept its organisation and its deep roots among the people intact despite the long years of her absence, and even longer period in Opposition.

The sea of people was so large that the long motorcade of supporters, with Ms. Bhutto’s truck bringing up in the rear, moved slower than a snail, taking more than three hours just to reach the main road from the terminal. It seemed certain that she would not reach her first destination, the mausoleum of Pakistan founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah, until the early hours of Friday.

Ms. Bhutto, dressed in green, looked exultant at the massive turn-out. “It’s great to be home, I am overwhelmed by the welcome,” she told The Hindu in a brief interview, waving to her supporters now and then as she spoke.

“The message from this is that people want change, the people want democracy, they want jobs, they want security of lives and livelihood,” she said.

Her return to Pakistan followed President Pervez Musharraf’s controversial agreement to withdraw corruption cases against her in exchange for her tacit support to him in the presidential election.

Describing the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) as the “first step” towards making changes in the way Pakistan governed, Ms. Bhutto said she would not go back to the “dysfunctional democracy of the past … The real issue for me is democracy.”

Ms. Bhutto said the NRO had become divisive because those opposing it were opponents of democracy. “Now they fear their time has come,” she said, expressing the hope that the Supreme Court would not strike it down just as it did not intervene in the earlier presidential pardons to Nawaz Sharif and nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan.

But for those in the milling crowds that filled the roads, the “deal” and her corruption charges were irrelevant.

“She’s back, that is all that matters. She will bring prosperity, she will end dictatorship and bring back people’s rule,” said Mehtab Lashiari, a student from the PPP’s youth wing, the People’s Students’ Federation, who was leading a large contingent from Sindh University in Hyderabad.

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