Pervez Musharraf
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has condemned the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. He said it was a terrorist act.The Pakistan president has appealed for peace. He has also announced three-day mourning in the wake Benazir’s killing.
Nawaz Sharif
Thursday, December 27, 2007 (Islamabad)
Nawaz Sharif describes Benazir Bhutto’s assassination as the most tragic incident in the history of Pakistan. ”I myself feel threatened,” says Sharif, whose party temporarily suspended the electioneering in the wake of the assassination. ”Are things in control now? Had things been in control, would this have happened?” he said, adding that Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf would have to give answers. ”I also feel unprotected and the lady must also have been feeling very unprotected,” Sharif said.Criticising Musharraf, he said, ”If Musharraf can spend crores on his own security, could he not spend some amount on the security of Bhutto.
Mr Wali Ahmad has made a comparison of the tragedy bound House of Bhutto in Pakistan and the House of Nehru -Gandhi in India.
Thursday, December 27, 2007 (New Delhi)The assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto draws a bloody parallel with the Gandhi family of India.
The Bhutto clan across the border and the Gandhis in India — arguably the most important political lineages in their respective countries — have lost generations violently to political vendetta and religious fanaticism.
The two families have also been deeply associated with each other in Indo-Pak relations.A young Benazir was famously by her father Zulfequar Ali Bhutto’s side when he signed the Simla agreement with Indira Gandhi in 1972. Seven years later, Zulfequar Bhutto was sent to the gallows by General Zia-ul Haq on April 4, 1979. He was hanged despite international appeal for clemency.
In India five years later, then prime minister Indira Gandhi was killed in 1984 by her own bodyguards. Her son and political novice Rajiv Gandhi stepped into her shoes, coming to power after a huge victory in the elections held after his mother’s assassination. Benazir Bhutto first became Pakistan’s Prime Minister in 1988. She had a lot in common with the equally charismatic Rajiv across the border. Both were educated abroad, in England in fact, were articulate and impressed the world as leaders at a young age.
In 1991, Rajiv was assassinated in Tamil Nadu by a suicide bomber during an election campaign. Another violent death in a family already rocked by the death of his younger brother Sanjay Gandhi in 1980 in a plane crash.
Benazir lost brother Murtaza to a police encounter in 1996 and another brother Shahnawaz under mysterious circumstances a decade before.
On Thursday, Bhutto too was killed by a suicide bomber while campaigning for elections.
The assassination of Bhutto draws the curtains down to the two families on either side of the border.