He walked into the room as Bilawal Zardari, a fresh-faced 19-year-old history student who recently finished his first term at Oxford University.

He walked out as Bilawal "Bhutto" Zardari, the newly crowned head of the political party - and the dynasty - that his mother, Benazir Bhutto, led until her assassination on Thursday.

After an emotional four-hour meeting in the Bhuttos' ancestral home, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) announced that Bilawal, Ms Bhutto's eldest child and only son, would succeed her as official chairman of the party. But he would return to Britain to continue his studies at Christ Church, Oxford, and his father and Ms Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, would run the party as co-chairman until he graduated in three years' time, the PPP said.

The PPP also declared that it would participate in parliamentary elections' scheduled for January 8, despite the chaos the has engulfed Pakistan since Ms Bhutto was killed in a suicide and gun attack at an election rally near the capital, Islamabad.

Q&A: the murder of Benazir Bhutto

Times South Asia Correspondent asks who had most to gain from killing the Pakistan People's Party leader

Multimedia

• Video: Bhutto assassinated

• Bhutto: the background, legacy and life

• Pictures: death of Benazir Bhutto

BACKGROUND

• Pakistan in chaos as Benazir Bhutto assassinated

• Who killed Benazir Bhutto? Main suspects

• Obituary: Benazir Bhutto, 1953-2007

• Can democracy survive Bhutto killing?

Related Links

• Torch passed from mother to son

• I hope he can be the superhero saviour

• Video: Bhutto 'killers' in crowd at last rally

Multimedia

• Pictures: death of Benazir Bhutto

There seemed to be agreement that both major opposition parties would run in the elections, and that they should take place as scheduled on January 8. Tariq Azim, a spokesman for the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q party, congratulated Bhutto’s party decision to contest the vote and not seek a delay. “We welcome it, and we are also ready for the contest on January 8,” he said after earlier predicting the election may be delayed up to four months. The Election Commission is due to announce on Monday whether the polling will be delayed.

Shortly after the PPP decision to run in the elections was announced, Bilawal told a news conference, "My mother always said: democracy is the best revenge!" his soft voice rising in anger.

Relatives and party officials responded with cries of "Long live Bhutto!" as Bilawal, staring ahead blankly through Armani spectacles, sat next to his father on one side and Amin Fahim, the PPP Vice Chairman on the other.

Thus passed the mantle to the third generation of the Bhutto dynasty - one of the world's best known and most tragic - which has defined Pakistani politics for much of the country's 60-year history.

The decision was made amid high drama at Naudero House, the family home in the southern province of Sindh that lies just a few miles from the white marble mausoleum where Ms Bhutto was buried alongside her father and two brothers on Friday.

About 80 members of the PPP's Central Executive Committee crammed around a dining table in a reception room as hundreds of senior party officials and Bhutto family members sat cross-legged outside, waiting for their decision.

On the wall above the table hung a portrait of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who became Pakistan's first populist Prime Minister in 1973, but was ousted in a coup in 1977 and executed two years later.

Beneath the picture, at the head of the table, the chairman's seat was occupied by a photograph of Ms Bhutto, who took over the party after her father's death and went on to serve twice as Prime Minister.

Times Recommends

• Tehran cannot live up to its rhetoric
• The new unicycle that will ‘change the world’
• We cannot wish away Iran’s bomb