When Bilawal Zardari wakes up this morning he faces not just a new year without his mother but a crash course in the dark arts of Pakistani politics and an overhaul of his student life.

The 19-year-old son of Benazir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister who was assassinated on Thursday, is due to return to Christ Church, Oxford, this month to continue his studies in history, despite his appointment on Sunday as titular head of her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

His life will never be the same again. Asif Ali Zardari, his father and the new co-chairman of the PPP, told The Times that his son would have to undergo the same transformation that his mother did when her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was deposed in a coup in 1977 and executed in 1979.

“I feel that partly he is already groomed and partly with age and time he’ll have to finish himself and finish getting acquainted to everybody and grow up,” he said from Naudero House, the Bhutto family home in the southern province of Sindh.

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

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• 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?

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“When Motarma [Bhutto] came to Pakistan and joined politics she wrote in her book: ‘I didn’t choose this life, it chose me’. She didn’t know any of the local languages. She was 22 years old. At 23 she went to prison. It didn’t take long for her to transform. It must have been a gigantic task but she managed.”

Under the succession plan, the young Mr Zardari announced that his father, who is 51, would handle the day-to-day running of the party until he graduated in three years’ time.

Mr Zardari senior is a controversial figure. He has urged the Government to proceed with parliamentary elections on January 8.

He said: “We feel there’s an anger in people and if we are going to save Pakistan from a break-up we have to convert that anger into positive energy and what more positive than democracy? Convert it into democracy and make them win the battle on the democratic paper rather than on the streets of Pakistan . . . Get on with it, get it over with, get a parliament and make a historical comeback of the party that would quash some of the frustration of the people at large in Pakistan.”

Mr Zardari refused to allow reporters to speak to his son. He did not rule out involving him in the election campaign. He said that he was considering asking British authorities to provide security for his son in England, but added that such details would be divulged on a “need-to-know” basis.

Other PPP officials said that Bilawal Zardari’s life would have to change considerably because of his new responsibilities, the extra media attention and the heightened concerns about his security.

“Because of the mother, the people have high expectations – her replacement is a very difficult job,” said Agha Siraj Durrani, president of the PPP in Larkana and a family friend.

Rehman Malik, a senior PPP official, said that the young man used to move around freely in Britain, without security, but would now find his movements restricted, even at Oxford.

PPP officials based in Britain are planning to meet police early this month. It is expected that Scotland Yard’s specialist protection branch, SO1, will make an assessment of the risk to Mr Zardari’s life. If they decide that he is at risk of assassination, they will liaise with Thames Valley Police to provide him with armed protection.

SO1 protects the Prime Minister and other government members and foreign dignitaries visiting Britain. But its brief also includes the security of “high-profile persons considered to be under threat from terrorist attack”.

Both the police and the university authorities have experience in dealing with high-profile students.

Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former US President, completed a two-year masters in international relations in 2003, and Tony Blair’s son, Nicky, finished his degree in modern history in the summer. Mr Zardari, however, is a unique case. First-year students could find themselves sharing a lecture theatre with the leader of a country’s governing party.

Mr Malik also said that Mr Zardari junior, who attended school in Dubai for eight years, would have to learn how to navigate Pakistan’s complex network of tribal, feudal and financial interests. “I’ve tried to teach him that when you analyse a person, you have to look at their body language and other things. Bilawal knows Pakistani society well from his interaction with drivers, cooks and officials.”

Even so, his life so far has hardly prepared him for the brutal cut and thrust of Pakistani politics, which claimed the lives of his mother, his grandfather and his two uncles.

While his father received hundreds of visitors yesterday, Mr Zardari spent the day with his sisters, Bakhtawar, 17, and Asifa, 14, in private family quarters in a modern extension to Naudero House that their mother had built.

Asked how his son was feeling, Mr Zardari senior said: “He’s as humble and as hurt as anyone else and of course more.” When asked how his son was spending his time, Mr Zardari’s face broke into a smile for the only time during the interview.

“What do kids always do on the internet?” he said. “There are so many hits on his Facebook [website] he’s trying to figure out a way of improving Naudero’s internet system because it’s very slow.”

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