Benazir Bhutto was a beautiful and idealistic woman when she came to Pakistan’s rescue in 1988. Growing up as the scion of one of its most powerful political families imposed enormous responsibilities on her and created perhaps unrealistic expectations of what she could deliver to save her chaotic country from disintegration.

During her two terms in office as prime minister, Bhutto earned a reputation among many as an imperious, venal, and corrupt politician, bringing Pakistan to the brink of financial ruin on more than one occasion. Her assassination now brings this teeming, nuclear-armed nation to the brink of complete state failure, with inevitable accusations that President Pervez Musharraf’s intelligence and security services were somehow complicit in her death.

I knew Benazir well. I am often blamed by her supporters for having helped bring her government down in 1996 by exposing her hypocrisy and corruption. We remained in touch over the years after she went into exile, even developing a begrudging respect for

each other over time. But I firmly believe that she loved Pakistan, and for all her faults, had returned there this time to turn a new page in its troubled political history. We should remember her for her courage to stand up in the face of incalculable odds to bring some semblance of sanity to the disaster that Pakistan has become.

Musharraf, with whom she tried futilely over the past three months to cobble together a power-sharing arrangement, must immediately call for an independent international investigation into her assassination, led by a blue ribbon panel of FBI and MI5 officials, that determines the extent - or lack - of complicity from Pakistan’s police and intelligence services in her death. This is the most critical decision he can make as a gesture of national reconciliation with bereaved Pakistan People’s Party workers to avoid the appearance of conflict to his ongoing service as president.

Her death will not have been in vain if Musharraf galvanizes the forces of democracy that bubble just under the surface of Pakistan’s political fabric to have a truly transparent election of all of Pakistan’s political leaders. In order to level the playing field, the Election Commission should delay the election until early February so each party can have time to regroup. The Election Commission should allow Nawaz Sharif, as bad a choice for Pakistan as he would be, to contest the election so the grass roots of democratic activism in this nation of

165 million people can take hold once again. Rebuilding political institutions was one of Benazir’s key platforms as a candidate. The country should honour her death by making that happen.

Bhutto was a brave woman. She was the face of modernity that Pakistan needed to salvage its descent into a sea of Islamist darkness. She should be remembered as a guardian of Pakistan’s identity as a modern Islamic nation. Her death need not be the beginning of Pakistan’s end. — The Christian Science Monitor