The Pakistan People's Party on Wednesday condemned the postponement of the general election, in the aftermath of the assassination of its chief Benazir Bhutto, but said that it will take part in the February 18 polls.
"The PPP condemns the decision, but we will take part in the elections," Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's husband and the new co-chairman of the party, told a press conference at her ancestral village of Naudero in Sindh province.
Reacting to President Pervez Musharraf's decision to seek help from Britain's Scotland Yard to investigate Bhutto's assassination, Zardari asked: "Where was Scotland Yard when Benazir Bhutto was attacked in Karachi on October 18?"
Bhutto was killed in a suicide attack in Rawalpindi on December 27. She had survived an earlier suicide attack on her motorcade in Karachi, shortly after returning to Pakistan from exile, on October 18.
Recalling what India's slain prime minister Rajiv Gandhi had said when his mother Indira Gandhi was assassinated --"When a big tree falls, the earth trembles" -- Zardari said, "Modern technology has already told us all (about Bhutto's killing).
"These people are naive. They don't know their politics. They just know how to pull the trigger," he said.
Announcing that Bhutto's chehlum (40th day of mourning) would be held on February 7, he said, "There is no world leader who has not condoled with me. The whole world is mourning. That was the greatness of Benazir Bhutto."
He said that the government had come up with the excuse of the sensitive law and order situation during the Islamic month of Moharram, which begins on January 10, to postpone the polls.
Zardari also warned the government against rigging the elections. "If the government tries to rig the polls, then don't blame us. We do not want confrontation. (PPP founder) Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and our elders have taught us to love."
He insisted that the PPP would contact the United Nations and ask it to appoint a commission to probe Bhutto's assassination.
Zardari also said that he would send PPP delegations to different countries and tell them to listen to the Pakistani people and not to the government of Musharraf.
He alleged that the Musharraf-led regime had only harmed the nation. Zardari said that when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was about to be executed by the regime of late General Zia-ul-Haq, he had told the PPP to contest polls.
However, the "dictator who announced the polls, thinking the PPP will not participate, decided to postpone the polls," he said, referring to Musharraf.
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