Of all the contributions that Benazir Bhutto might make to Pakistan’s future the “long march” she has devised, from Lahore to Islamabad, is among the most misguided. It reeks of vanity, and of recklessness towards the lives of her supporters; it is only three weeks since suicide attacks on her rally in Karachi killed 140. Her plan for this march (having said, after the Karachi horror, that she would have no more huge rallies), is an unnecessary attempt to demonstrate the ability of her Pakistan People’s Party to bring out supporters across the country. That power is beyond dispute, even if the crowd that greeted her in Karachi, on her return from eight years abroad, may have owed more to the party’s feudal machinery than to spontaneous adoration of its leader.

For that reason she is probably an indispensable part of any solution to the present crisis. So, too, is Nawaz Sharif, leader of the rival Pakistan Muslim League, the deeply conservative mainstream party. And so is President Musharraf (or “another khaki”, as Pakistanis refer to generals who may succeed him). Even though these three people cannot stand to be in the same room together (apart from the spasms in which they decide that they might do deals), they are necessary players if Pakistan is to edge its way from military rule to democracy.

Government officials said yesterday that under the state of emergency Bhutto’s march could not take place, and they placed her under house arrest for a second time to prevent her attendance. Their justification is bankrupt; Musharraf’s sudden assumption of emergency powers is one of the hot-headed impulses that have studded his presidency, often triggered by personal feuds. And in a month crowned by that misjudgment, it may seem harsh to hold Bhutto’s fancy for this march against her - until you consider the carnage in Karachi.

That rally was carefully and expensively drummed up by the PPP. The posters that blanketed Karachi urging people to attend were sponsored by local officials to promote themselves (their own portrait often larger than Bhutto’s). They even sponsored graffiti (their names taking up half the space). In Karachi’s main hospital, the morning after the blast, surveying the rows of injured people, one town committee member from outside Lahore said he personally had organised 10,000 to come in buses. That takes some doing.

Bhutto was killed by bomb blast

The team from the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command have backed the claim that Benazir Bhutto was not shot

BACKGROUND

• Pakistan in turmoil as ‘martial law’ imposed

• Bhutto escapes as bombers kill 126

• Timeline: Pakistan's period of turmoil

• The man out to oust a President

• Internal crisis gives Pakistan reason for hope

Given the pledges by terrorists to kill her, the rally, through which she expected her bus to crawl for three days, seemed self-indulgent and out of touch with the risk. “Everyone there knew he might die, but came for the sake of democracy,” she said, but that makes light of the danger to those not protected by a blast-proof bus, as she was, and glosses over the party machinery deployed to get them to turn up.

The PPP pledged to support the widows and children of the dead (all but two were men, although there appears to be no formal list, and so the common figure of at least 140 is hard to substantiate). But however much they appreciate that, it is a sign of the PPP’s feudal bargain with its supporters – and the feudal nature of politics overall. There was no suggestion that the state itself might support them (or that Musharraf would visit the hospitals). One rally may be forgiven; two seems beyond careless. Yet yesterday Bhutto called on women and children to join the long march. Her role in the next stage of Pakistan’s politics is proven (and accepted by governments now leaning on Musharraf). The need for these rallies, which three weeks ago she had forsworn, is not.

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