Pakistan's Bhutto political dynasty passed the torch on Sunday as the 19-year-old son of assassinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was named chairman of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), according to dpa. Bilawal Zardari, a bespectacled Oxford University student, vowed during a live nationwide press conference at his family's ancestral home in southern Sindh province to carry on the work of his slain mother. Benazir Bhutto was killed in a gun-suicide bomb attack last Thursday that stunned the nation and has flung nuclear-armed Pakistan into its biggest crisis in more than three decades. Party officials also announced that they would not boycott crucial forthcoming parliamentary elections on January 8, which are meant to return Pakistan to civilian rule after more than eight years under military rule by President Pervez Musharraf, who until last month was also the country's army chief. "My mother always said, 'Democracy is the best revenge'," a reserved Zardari said of Bhutto, 54, a two-time prime minister who fought successive military regimes during her political career and spent time in both prison and self-exile.
