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Benazir Bhutto

11th and 13th prime minister of Pakistan (1953–2007)

Benazir Bhutto (21 June 1953 – 27 December 2007) was a Pakistani politician, the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state, twice elected as Prime Minister of Pakistan, first in 1988 and again 1993. She was the eldest child of former premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and was assassinated in December of 2007 while campaigning for the Pakistan Peoples Party which her father had founded.

Ultimately, leadership requires action: daring to take steps that are necessary but unpopular, challenging the status quo in order to reach a brighter future.

Quotes

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Democracy needs support and the best support for democracy comes from other democracies.
 
Leadership is to do what is right by educating and inspiring an electorate, empathizing with the moods, needs, wants, and aspirations of humanity.
 
I have found that those who do achieve peace never acquiesce to obstacles, especially those constructed of bigotry, intolerance, and inflexible tradition.
  • You are creating a Frankenstein. - Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, concerned about the growing strength of the Islamist movement, told President George H. W. Bush.[1]
  • To make peace, one must be an uncompromising leader. To make peace, one must also embody compromise.
    Throughout the ages, leadership and courage have often been synonymous. Ultimately, leadership requires action: daring to take steps that are necessary but unpopular, challenging the status quo in order to reach a brighter future.
    And to push for peace is ultimately personal sacrifice, for leadership is not easy. It is born of a passion, and it is a commitment. Leadership is a commitment to an idea, to a dream, and to a vision of what can be. And my dream is for my land and my people to cease fighting and allow our children to reach their full potential regardless of sex, status, or belief.
  • Leadership is to do what is right by educating and inspiring an electorate, empathizing with the moods, needs, wants, and aspirations of humanity.
    Making peace is about bringing the teeming conflicts of society to a minimal point of consensus. It is about painting a new vision on the canvas of a nation's political history. Ultimately, leadership is about the strength of one's convictions, the ability to endure the punches, and the energy to promote an idea.
    And I have found that those who do achieve peace never acquiesce to obstacles, especially those constructed of bigotry, intolerance, and inflexible tradition.
    • "Reflections on Working Towards Peace" in Architects of Peace: Visions of Hope in Words and Images (2000) edited by Michael Collopy
  • It is one thing being able to contest an election and to give the people hope that I can be the next prime minister. It is a totally different situation where the people of Pakistan are told that the results are already taken and the leader of your choice is banned.
  • I find that whenever I am in power, or my father was in power, somehow good things happen. The economy picks up, we have good rains, water comes, people have crops. I think the reason this happens is that we want to give love and we receive love.
    • As quoted in "I never asked for power" in The Guardian (15 August 2002)
  • Whatever my aims and agendas were, I never asked for power. I think they need me. I don't think it's addictive. I think, if anything, it's the opposite of addictive. You want to run away from it, but it doesn't let you go. It's doing it again.
    • As quoted in "I never asked for power" in The Guardian (15 August 2002)
 
If they only showed this much spunk when it came to containing the terrorists I don't think we would have such a problem.
 
I put my life in danger and came here because I feel this country is in danger.
  • If they only showed this much spunk when it came to containing the terrorists I don't think we would have such a problem.
  • I put my life in danger and came here because I feel this country is in danger. People are worried. We will bring the country out of this crisis.
    • At the rally in Rawalpindi after which she was assassinated. (27 December 2007)

Daughter of the East : an autobiography

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  • Looting. Rape. Kidnappings. Murder. Where no one had cared about Pakistan when I arrived at Harvard, now everyone did. And the condemnation of my country was universal. At first, I refused to believe the accounts in the Western press of atrocities being committed by our army in what the East Bengal rebels were now calling Bangladesh. According to the government-controlled Pakistani papers my parents sent me every week, the brief rebellion had been quelled. What were these charges then that Dacca had been burned to the ground and firing squads sent into the university to execute students, teachers, poets, novelists, doctors and lawyers? I shook my head in disbelief. Refugees were reportedly fleeing by the thousands, so many of them strafed and killed by Pakistani planes that their bodies were being used to erect road blocks.
  • The stories were so extreme I didn't know what to think. The lecture we'd been given about the dangers of rape during freshman orientation week at Radcliffe had initially seemed as unbelievable. I had never even heard of rape until I came to America and the very possibility of it kept me from going out alone at night for the next four years. After the lecture, the possibility of rape at Harvard was real to me. The rape of East Bengal was not. I found security in the official jingoistic line in our part of the world that the reports in the Western press were 'exaggerated' and a 'Zionist plot' against an Islamic state.
  • How many times since have I asked God to forgive me for my ignorance? I didn't see then that the democratic mandate for Pakistan had been grossly violated.
  • I was also too young and naive at Harvard to understand that the Pakistani army was capable of committing the same atrocities as any army let loose in a civilian population. The psychology can be deadly as it was when US forces massacred innocent civilians in Mylai in 1968.

Destiny’s daughter (2007)

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As I’ve said before, this is not the life I chose; it chose me … But I accepted the responsibility and I’ve never wavered in my commitment.
Interview with Ginny Dougary, "Destiny’s daughter" in The Times [UK] (28 April 2007)
  • It’s premature to talk about working alongside General Musharraf at this stage, although in the past we have worked jointly on certain issues such as the Women’s Bill.
    At the same time, I want you to know that we are also partners with Mr Nawaz Sharif in something called the charter for the restoration of democracy, so we are talking about a new democratic process in which the people of Pakistan are allowed to choose their leader and put together a coalition. And for that we are calling for a robust international monitoring team to ensure that these elections are fair and free because obviously if they’re not, the ruling party will still be in the driver’s seat and the creeping Talebanisation of Pakistan will continue.
  • If the people vote for my party and parliament elects me as prime minister, it would be an honour for me to take up that role and General Musharraf would be there as president, so I think that a good working relationship between him and me would be a necessity for Pakistan. … I would have the choice of either respecting the will of the people and making it a success or being short-sighted and putting my personal feelings about past events ahead of the national interest, and what I want more than anything is for Pakistan to prosper as we make a transition to democracy
  • My party would not have allowed the Taleban to become such a huge force that they would need to sign a peace treaty.
  • My father always would say, "My daughter will go into politics? My daughter will become prime minister", but it’s not what I wanted to do. I would say, "No, Papa, I will never go into politics." As I’ve said before, this is not the life I chose; it chose me … But I accepted the responsibility and I’ve never wavered in my commitment.
  • I don’t fear death. I remember my last meeting with my father when he told me, "You know, tonight when I will be killed, my mother and my father will be waiting for me." It makes me weepy … but I don’t think it can happen unless God wants it to happen because so many people have tried to kill me.
  • I really do think that there is at least some degree of causality that most major terrorist attacks took place when the extremists did not have to deal with a democratic Pakistani government, when they operated without check and oversight. I believe that if my government had not been destabilised in Pakistan in 1996, the Taleban could not have allowed Osama bin Laden to set up base in Afghanistan, openly recruit and train young men from all over the Muslim world and declare war on America in 1998.
  • I know death comes. I’ve seen too much death, young death.
  • It would be so nice to have the luxury just to laze. So nice not to have to always get up and get dressed for some occasion. Always having to move from here to there, where everything is scheduled and even having lunch with my kids on their Easter break has to be slotted in. Maybe one day...
  • I was brought up to believe that human beings are good, which is why it shocks me to the core when I see human beings behaving badly.

Quotes about Bhutto

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Benazir Bhutto was a woman of immense personal courage and bravery. Knowing, as she did, the threats to her life, the previous attempt at assassination, she risked everything in her attempt to win democracy in Pakistan, and she has been assassinated by cowards afraid of democracy. ~ Gordon Brown
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Bhutto represents everything the fundamentalists hate — a powerful, highly-educated woman operating in a man’s world… ~ Ginny Dougary
  • Mrs. Bhutto served her nation twice as Prime Minister and she knew that her return to Pakistan earlier this year put her life at risk. Yet she refused to allow assassins to dictate the course of her country.
    We stand with the people of Pakistan in their struggle against the forces of terror and extremism. We urge them to honor Benazir Bhutto's memory by continuing with the democratic process for which she so bravely gave her life.
  • It was her father who chose to call his first-born daughter Benazir, which means “without comparison”. I think he would feel that she is living up to his name.
    • Ginny Dougary in "Destiny’s daughter" in The Times (28 April 2007)
  • “I do not regret the death of Zia” was Benazir Bhutto’s first reaction when she heard that the man who had sent her father to the gallows was dead. She had been in Pakistan for just over two years now, since a triumphant return from exile in April 1986. Zia had announced he was finally going to hold elections, and he had allowed her to fly home, not expecting the crowd of hundreds of thousands who thronged the streets to greet her and chant “Zia dog.” The dictator decided to place obstacles in her way. He maintained the ban on political parties, which meant Bhutto and her Pakistan Peoples Party couldn’t be on the ballot, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling they should be allowed to run. He scheduled the general elections for November 16, 1988, when Benazir would be days away from delivering her first child. But now that the dictator was dead, Benazir would run practically unopposed.
    • Kim Ghattas Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East (2020)
  • Benazir Bhutto’s party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, won enough seats to form a government. For five days, there was dancing and music on the streets of Pakistan, a public eruption of joy after years of fear, a celebration of life after everything but religion had been banned. Were people celebrating the first democratic elections in over a decade, or was it a belated celebration of Zia’s demise? Probably both, but another, more amorphous dictatorship was taking hold of the country, born from seeds planted there by Zia, with generous help from Saudi Arabia and the United States.
    • Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East (2020)
  • Benazir was now prime minister, the first-ever female Muslim head of government anywhere—and one of the rare women leaders on the world stage, still a small club. But she would never again appear in public—in Pakistan or overseas—without a veil, a loosely wrapped white chiffon scarf that became her trademark. She would try to undo Zia’s Islamization and carry forward her father’s dream of a progressive country where there was no discrimination on the basis of sex, race, or religion. But she would fail, assailed by the now entrenched religious and security establishment bristling at a woman leader and her secular rule. With the encouragement of Saudi clerics, there had even been fatwas against her run for office. She would be removed from power by August 1990, outdone by the military establishment’s maneuvers against her, and plagued by allegations of corruption.
    • Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East (2020)
  • Most Pakistanis had hoped her rise to office would yield a return to normal life, to the pre-Zia era, with no screaming clerics or gangs of armed gunmen—religious or criminal—ruling the streets. They looked forward to a full return of civilian rule. But Pakistan’s army, powerful before, was now so entrenched in politics that they didn’t even need a general in the presidency to rule the country. Bhutto was replaced by a Zia protégé and friend of Saudi Arabia, Nawaz Sharif, a soft-spoken forty-year-old with a round face and a balding head. Sharif appeared bland, a nondescript-looking man, but he was a ruthless, cunning politician who would dominate Pakistani politics for the next three decades, in and out of power, in and out of political exile in Saudi Arabia, yet always pushing to continue Zia’s Islamization and sectarianization of the country.
    • Kim Ghattas, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East (2020)
  • Bhutto is a survivor and has an infinite belief in herself and her abilities. Rarely does she reveal even glimpses of her true character or her real thoughts. She may have genuinely not yet decided whether to return. Or she may have accepted that she can never return, but intends to leave the military on tenterhooks for as long as possible. Despite Musharraf's hostility, Bhutto's party is still the strongest political force in Pakistan and she is the only Pakistani politician with any natural charisma.
  • The Islamists killed Benazir Bhutto as they killed her father. But they shouldn’t be allowed to kill Pakistan’s hopes for democracy.
  • It's the vacuum that has been created by the martyrdom of my late wife that has sparked the [new situation] in Pakistan. She said in her book, "My death will be the catalyst of the change."
    • Asif Ali Zardari at an interview of Newsweek, commenting about his late wife's (Benazir Bhutto), martyrdom. [1]

See also

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  1. ↑ https://www.newsweek.com/war-terror-road-september-11-151771
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