Professor Plum, in the library, with the candlestick murdered Bhutto.
Conspiracy theories, yada, yada, yada. It doesn't really make any difference except to excite ones own speculative senses.
My wife has just spoken to family members who live in Pindi and just up the road in Islamabad who are thankfully all ok. Basically the whole area has gone into voluntary lockdown. Shops, petrol stations, and the like have closed. Shutters have been put up and roller doors lowered to protect shopfronts. Some PPP supporters have vented their anger in the streets by burning and rioting. Most people are at home indoors now. All the phones (landline and mobile) were cut for a period of time in the immediate aftermath. We only just got through on the phone a good few hours after the terrible events that unfolded.
Bee bee (Benazir Bhutto) recently on Geo and ARY (Pakistan TV channels) had favourable opinion polls between 60 and 70 percent popularity. I too am not surprised that this terrible event transpired. Bhutto had balls. She knew that she was at a high risk of being assasinated. She accepted that risk and she paid the price for sticking to her principles and not cowering to the small islamist jihadi extremists who seek to plunge Pakistan into a Taliban style dark ages similar to that of which existed in Afghanistan.
I am not going to trample all over the name of a woman who showed more balls than most and stood by the courage of her convictions. Bhutto could have so easily taken the easy way of living in Dubai and the U.K. while earning hefty dollars on the speaking circuit such as past Presidents and PM's do. She could have sat back living the luxurious high life while thumbing her nose at her country of birth. She did NOT. So while she had shady allegations of corruption hang over her head and while she had successes mixed with plenty of failures as a past PM I will not seek to tread over her name only hours after her death.
Bottom line for me is that she was a courageous women. Her death is a major blow but it is not one from which Pakistan can not recover and move forward. As a Westerner I am struck by the emotion that I have seen from my relatives in response to the news. My wife, as many of her direct family, was no Bhutto supporter yet there have been many tears flowing this afternoon.
And in my first visit to Pakistan to see my wife's family relatives/members in her local village in Kashmir along with those in Islamabad and Rawalpindi a few months back I know that they are immensly frustrated by Musharraf and his slowness in taking the country forward and out of crisis. My feeling from my time over there is that a majority of the Pakistani public have been frustrated by decades of corruption, incompetence, poor leadership, and political bickering over power. Coup after coup. They are frustrated to see that their cousins across the border in India have made so much progress while Pakistan languishes under military dictatorship and stalled democratic reforms. I feel for them because they deserve better.
My thoughts and prayers are with those who have lost loved ones including the long suffering Bhutto family. May those who planned and plotted these crimes be brought to justice in a courtroom or via the pointy end of military hardware.