The party of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto released her will to the public on Tuesday to prove that it names her husband as her political heir. The move follows a whispering campaign that Benazir Bhutto had not handed the leadership of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) to her spouse Asif Ali Zardari, and that she instead picked their 19-year-old son Bilawal.
The hand-written will - dated October 16, two days before the former premier returned to Pakistan from exile - also says that she feared for Pakistan's future in the face of extremism and dictatorship.
"I would like my husband Asif Ali Zardari to lead you in this interim period until you and he decide what is best. I say this because he is a man of courage and honour," said the will, unveiled at the Bhutto home here.
Benazir Bhutto was assassinated at a political rally on December 27. The party named Zardari and Bilawal as co-chairmen three days later, after the will was read out to senior party members, but not to the public.
The will says that Zardari "spent 11.5 years in prison without bending despite torture. He has the political stature to keep our party united." Zardari spent the time in jail on allegations of corruption and of involvement in the killing of Bhutto's brother, Murtaza, in 1996. He was never convicted and was freed in 2004.
But he remains a divisive figure within the party, and with Bilawal still studying at Oxford University the party is keen to present a unified face ahead of a general elections on February 18. "Some enemies wanted to create chaos in the party by spreading false speculation about the contents of the will," party spokeswoman Sherry Rehman told a news conference as she made the document public.
"That is why the party high command has decided to share the will with the public and the media to foil all such controversies and keep the party united." Addressed to the "officials and members" of the party, the one-page will also says Bhutto was "honoured" to lead them and urges them to continue her work. "I fear for the future of Pakistan. Please continue the fight against extremism, dictatorship, poverty and ignorance," it says.
The Pakistan government and the US Central Intelligence Agency have blamed Baitullah Mehsud, an al Qaeda-linked tribal warlord, for Bhutto's murder in a gun and suicide bomb attack.
In a posthumously published autobiography, Bhutto says she was informed that groups, including Mehsud's and another led by a son of Osama bin Laden were targeting her. But she also said that senior government and intelligence officials were plotting against her. The government has denied these claims.
Rehman said the will would be included in her autobiography. Zardari and the party are set to kick-start campaigning for February 18 general elections when the official mourning period for Bhutto ends later this week.
But in a sign of the unrest that has been brewing since Bhutto's killing, a PPP activist died in hospital in Karachi on Tuesday, a day after he was injured in a shooting at an election meeting. The 22-year-old was hit in the chest when unknown gunmen sprayed bullets at the party rally in Lyari, a staunchly pro-Bhutto slum area.
In Islamabad, riot police used tear-gas to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing protesters who tried to reach the residence of the country's deposed chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, witnesses said. The demonstrators chanted slogans against President Pervez Musharraf, who sacked Chaudhry on November 3 under a state of emergency. Chaudhry remains under detention despite the lifting of the emergency in mid-December.