Islamabad - Even in death, Benazir Bhutto draws a crowd.
The Pakistani political icon, assassinated last December 27 while campaigning for prime minister, commanded a packed audience for the recent launch of her final book, completed just two days before her slaying.
It has been the same scene at the final campaign rallies of her opposition Pakistani People's (PPP) Party before next Monday's Election, where giant portraits of Bhutto were hung high over the stage, her dark brown eyes gazing down upon her loving supporters.
On Monday Bhutto again will loom large over the polls, which are supposed to bring a return of civilian government following more than eight years of military rule under embattled President Pervez Musharraf, who only recently shed his army uniform.
Whether that actually happens remains to be seen.
Pakistan's year-long political crisis has seen emergency rule, the sacking of the judiciary, and dozens of suicide bombings by Islamic militants that have killed more than 1,000 people. But even that, along with Bhutto's assassination and bomb explosions at three campaign rallies in the past week, have been unable to derail the polls.
For better or for worse, and barring a catastrophic disaster, tens of millions of Pakistanis will go to polling stations across the country on Monday.
'The Pakistani people are used to the bomb explosions now,' said long-time political analyst Ayaz Amir, who is running for a provincial parliament seat in Punjab. 'It will pass off more peacefully than people expect.'
But the bigger issue is what happens after Monday. Bhutto's PPP and the fellow opposition party of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif continue to claim that Musharraf's government is planning to rig the polls in favour of his political backers, the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid. Pakistan has a long history of electoral fraud.
Their claims are not without merit. According to a recent report from the US-based Human Rights Watch, since the campaign began in November 2007 'the Election Commission of Pakistan has ignored allegations of widespread irregularities, including arrests and harassment of opposition candidates and party members, and the misuse of state resources, administration and state machinery to the advantage of candidates backed by President Pervez Musharraf.'
In a message from the grave, Bhutto writes in her book, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West, that Musharraf repeatedly reneged on promises to restore democracy and ensure parliamentary supremacy that were part of a deal that led to her return home from self-exile in October 2007 to contest the polls.
The big question now is whether Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999 and has emasculated state institutions, jailed political opponents and seen Islamic militancy expand alarmingly on his watch, will take desperate measures to preserve his regime.
'The government has already done a lot of pre-poll rigging to help the ruling party to remain in power ... it shows how weak they are,' said Talat Masood, a retired Army general and political analyst.
For his part, Musharraf has repeatedly insisted that the elections will be free and fair and has welcomed the possible arrival of a civilian government to deal with the myriad of problems facing nuclear-armed Pakistan, chief among them the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
'The world is watching us,' Musharraf said during a speech on Thursday. 'Our prestige is at stake.'
If he is true to his word, then Bhutto's PPP will likely form the next government, the ruling PML-Q will be all but finished, and Musharraf will come little more than a ceremonial head of state.
Recent independent opinion polls show that around 50 per cent of voters support the PPP, now led by Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zardari, with 22 per cent backing Nawaz's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz. The ruling PML-Q, popularly known as the Q-League, lags in third place with a dismal 14 per cent.
Musharraf's own popularity is at its worst since he took power, with 62 per cent of those polled in a BBC survey and 75 per cent in a poll by the US-based International Republican Institute wanting him to immediately resign.
While the writing appears to be on the wall, the ruling party continues to discount the polls as flawed and insists the Q-League will win. Musharraf himself appears unusually relaxed despite the specter of a hostile incoming civilian government whose first order of business might be to attempt to impeach him.
'He's not resigned to (losing),' Amir said. 'I think he's still trying to clutch at straws, he still thinks that somehow the election can be turned around to the Q-League's favour.'
Amir noted that the army which Musharraf commanded until November 2007 is increasingly distancing itself from politics, and presumably from him, calling into question whether it would back him if he moved to quash expected post-election protests if the ruling party wins.
'Even if Q-League wins a free and fair election, nobody would accept it,' Amir said.
Zardari, who could become the next prime minister, has already called on the opposition to prepare to hit the streets if Musharraf and his backers do not heed the public's call for change, alluding to the violence that followed Kenya's recent disputed polls.
'Either we stay together or the casualty rate is going to be exactly what it is, and has been, in other countries where great difficulties have come,' he said.
For his part, Musharraf has warned the opposition not to protest if they lose on Monday, setting the stage for a possible showdown between 'dictatorship and democracy' that Bhutto herself predicted was inevitable.
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