Pakistan's former prime minister Benazir Bhutto has said she is mulling a virtual campaign for Pakistan's upcoming general election that will use phone messages and taped speeches to avoid violent attacks like the suicide bombing of her homecoming rally in Karachi last week.
"Intimidation by murdering cowards will not be allowed to derail Pakistan's transition to democracy," Bhutto has written in an opinion piece in the prestigious Wall Street Journal.
"We are now focusing on hybrid techniques that combine individual and mass voter contact with sharp security constraints," said the 54-year-old two-time former premier whose motorcade was rocked within hours after her return from self-exile by two blasts that killed nearly 140 people.
"Where people have telephones, we can experiment with taped voice messages from me describing my issue positions and urging them to vote. In rural areas we are contemplating taped messages from me played regularly on boom boxes set up in village centres."
"Instead of the traditional mass caravans of Pakistani politics, we are discussing the feasibility of 'virtual caravans' and 'virtual mass rallies' where I would deliver
important campaign addresses to large audiences all over the four provinces of Pakistan," said Bhutto, who had yesterday opposed the Pakistan government's plan to ban rallies ahead of the general election due by mid-January.
Bhutto, who has made two brief appearances in public since the blasts, also said that she would have to "modify" her poll campaign while keeping alive elements of the "mass, grassroots, people-to-people politics" of her party.
Bhutto wrote that Pakistan "is not California or New York, where candidates can campaign through paid media and targeted direct mail. That technology is not only logistically impossible, but it is inconsistent with our political culture".
She added: "The people of Pakistan ... expect mass rallies and caravans, and to hear directly from their leaders through bullhorns and loud speakers. Under normal conditions it is challenging. Under the terrorist threat, it is extraordinarily difficult. My task is to make sure that it is not impossible."
She also said the attack on her motorcade was "not totally unexpected".
"I had received credible information that I was being targeted by elements that wanted to disrupt the democratic process. Obviously, I knew the risks," she said.
