The PPP president for Sindh, Qaim Ali Shah, predicted on Tuesday that more than one million people will take to the streets when Benazir returns from exile on October 18. The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) also rejected speculation that ex-premier Benazir would delay her planned flight to Karachi on Thursday.
"We have estimated that more than one million people will be coming," Qaim Ali Shah, the PPP president for Sindh province, told a news conference in Karachi. "People have talked about a million-man march before but we will show them in reality."
Shah said Bhutto loyalists were coming "by foot, by car, by bus, by train" from all over Pakistan to Karachi. Benazir has lived in self-imposed exile for the past eight years in Dubai and London to avoid corruption charges, which were dropped earlier this month in a deal with President Pervez Musharraf.
If the party's predictions come true the turnout will rival the million people who welcomed her back to Pakistan in 1986 during the military dictatorship of Zia-ul-Haq.
Musharraf and other government officials have urged Bhutto to delay her return until the Supreme Court rules in coming weeks on the legality of her amnesty and Musharraf's recent presidential election victory.
"There has been propaganda about the fact that she will not come. But I can confirm that she will come on the 18th (Thursday)," he said. The party official also said that moves by the chief minister of Sindh province to remove giant billboards of Bhutto from Karachi were "unconstitutional and illegal."