Bhutto supporters weep, vow loyalty to party

NAUDERO, Pakistan (Reuters) - With a heavy heart and sorrowful eyes, 82-year-old Hajran Mirani had longed to vote her neighbor Benazir Bhutto back into power on Monday.

Instead, she made her way to the same polling booth Bhutto would have voted at had it not been for her December 27 assassination, to show solidarity for the two-time former prime minister and her Pakistan People's Party (PPP).

Voting for the National Assembly seat for Naudero, the town in southern Sindh province where Bhutto was standing, has been postponed because of Bhutto's murder in a gun and bomb suicide attack, but provincial assembly seats are still up for grabs.

"The sorrow will remain with us forever. We will never forget Benazir Bhutto," Mirani said, her thumb stained purple with ink after voting.

Above her, the ceiling and walls are charred black, the scars of a fire that gutted the municipal building-turned-polling station in rioting that followed Bhutto's murder.

"Two months have passed, yet we are still in mourning. Due to constant weeping, I have lost my vision," she added, as her grand-daughter led her by the hand.

"God is most powerful. The PPP will succeed."

ALL ABOUT BHUTTO

Farmer Pervez Bhutto, no relation but from the region's wider Bhutto clan, bows his head as he recalls his slain employer.

The 27-year-old works on farmland owned by the Bhutto family, which holds a feudal grip over the surrounding rural Larkana district and owns thousands of acres planted with mangoes, guava, wheat, paddy and sugar cane.

"I've voted PPP my whole life, so have my family. She gave us prosperity, employment, earnings. We are her servants. We are the farmers of Benazir Bhutto," he said.

"She is still alive with us. Martyrs stay alive," he added, suddenly going silent, his eyes filled with tears.

In a separate room where men vote, an argument breaks out between a PPP official and a supporter from the party of Benazir Bhutto's second cousin and rival, veteran politician Mumtaz Ali Bhutto.

Voting is briefly halted while they argue over whether voters should be allowed to vote if their national identity card number is not on the electoral register.

There were similar scenes at a handful of other polling stations in the district.

Mumtaz Bhutto, whose Sindh National Front is boycotting the poll, believes another branch of the clan should have inherited the Bhutto political dynasty rather than Benazir's own 19-year-old son, Bilawal.

In a country where many rural dwellers live in poverty, earning just $16 a month, the wealth is concentrated in the hands of landowners in an almost medieval system. And political parties are seen as the property of dominant families.

"We're from the same family. People have political differences, but family comes first," said Mumtaz's wife, Zeenat Begum, as she visited a polling station. "It's very sad for the country, not just the province."

"But I think Fatima and Zulfikar junior are the ones who are the legal (political) heirs," she added, referring to Bhutto's niece and nephew, whose father, Murtaza, Bhutto's brother, was killed in a police shooting in 1996.

"All over the world, if it's a monarchy, the inheritance comes to the son's children rather than the daughter's. Of course it's not a monarchy. It's a hierarchy."

(Additional reporting by Nazir Siyal; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)