ABBOTTABAD, Pakistan: Some 30,000 people flocked to hear Benazir Bhutto and other Pakistani opposition leaders as the main opposition alliance restarted its campaign for fresh elections.
The rally in Abbottabad, a hill town 120 km (75 miles) by road north of Islamabad, was the first since the opposition was paralyzed by a government clampdown on dissent in August.
Bhutto, 33, the daughter of executed former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, drove from the order of the North West frontier province in a three hour process on to Abbott.
She said the campaign by the 10party Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD), set back badly in August, was just beginning and would go on until new polls were held.
The government says the elections in February 1985, when martial law was still in force and political parties were banned, were valid and that new ones are not due until 1990.
The crowd was put by party officials at several hundred thousand but estimated by correspondents at the Jinnah Garden Venue at up to 40,000.
“It is the biggest public meeting ever held in Abbottabad,” Shabbir Husain Shah, local leader of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) told Reuters.
People climbed trees and roofs and chanted “Benazir for Prime Minister”, undaunted by the failure of the public address system and the partial collapse of the Rostrum,
“This town has never seen anything like this. They have never seen such a phenomenon before, all the arrangements collapsed”, ‘one PPP workers said.
Abbottabad, a town of some 60,000 to 70,000 people, is only a few km (miles) from Pakistan’s main military academy at Kakul
The town, 1,220 meters (4,000 feet) up in the Himalayan foothills, was named for a British officer in 19th century.
Only nine of the 10 alliance parties were represented The 10th, Tehrik Istiqlal led by former Air Force Chief Asghar Khan, is boycotting MRD activities and has threatened to withdraw.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 17, 1986
