Bhutto's teenage son inherits 'position occupied by martyrs'

A shy 19-year-old, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, took centre stage in Pakistan's tumultuous and bloody politics yesterday, speaking in English and saying: "My mother always said democracy is the best revenge."

With that sentiment Benazir's Bhutto's eldest child, an undergraduate at Oxford University, was made co-chairman of the Pakistan People's Party, the country's most powerful political grouping founded by his grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

With him, as chairman, is his highly controversial father Asif Zardari, who will run the party until Bilawal graduates and most probably long after that. He is only in his first-term at Christ Church, the grandest of the colleges, reading history. Both mother and grandfather studied at Oxford.

At Benazir Bhutto's home in the village of Naudero, in the south of the country, young Bilawal was unveiled to the gathered media as night fell, following a four-hour meeting of the People's Party top leadership.

He read out to the meeting Benazir's hand-written last will and instructions for the party, a document few others knew existed. In the document, which Mr Zardari said was dated 16 October, two days before Benazir's fateful return from exile to Pakistan, she decreed the succession, fearing for her life.

What was not made clear in the press conference but emerged from other party sources is that the will apparently named Mr Zardari alone to lead the party. However, during the meeting he went over to Bilawal and announced that he had asked him to be co-chairman.

The party also resolved to contest the general elections, which are scheduled for 8 January, setting up another clash with the government, which appears set on a postponement of the polls, in the wake of the unrest that has followed Benazir's assassination.

Looking frightened and uttering few words, Bilawal sat with his father to one side and Amin Fahim, the party's deputy chairman, on the other. He cradled a portrait of his mother in his lap and when he spoke, it was only in English.

"My party's long struggle for democracy will continue, with new vigour," he said, adding later that he recognised that the chairmanship of the People's Party was "a position occupied by martyrs".