Benazir Bhutto

[raiazlan]

Benazir Bhutto


Born: Karachi, June 21, 1953

Died: Rawalpindi, December 27, 2007

A life not ordinary
Benazir Bhutto knew the risks she ran when she decided to wage a public campaign for the restoration of democracy. Before she returned to Pakistan in October after eight years of self-imposed exile, she had said, “They might try to assassinate me. I have prepared my family for any possibility.” Here we take a look at the highs and lows of the life and career of the first Muslim woman Prime Minister of the world
Benazir chats with her mother Nusrat Bhutto at her villa in Karachi a few days before Benazir’s marriage in 1987
Benazir with her son Bilawal (left), daughters Asifa (second left) & Bakhtawar (right) in Karachi in December 1997

• Benazir Bhutto was born on June 21, 1953, into a wealthy landowning family. Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founded the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and was president and later Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1971 to 1977.

• After gaining degrees in politics at Harvard and Oxford universities, Benazir returned to Pakistan in 1977, just before the military seized power from her father. She inherited the leadership of the PPP after her father’s execution in 1979 under military ruler General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq.

• First voted in as Prime Minister in 1988, Benazir was sacked by the then-President on corruption charges in 1990. She took power again in 1993 after her successor, Nawaz Sharif, was forced to resign after a row with the President. Benazir was no more successful in her second spell as Prime Minister, and Sharif was back in power by 1996.

• In 1999, both Benazir and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, were sentenced to five years in jail and fined $8.6 million on charges of taking kickbacks from a Swiss company hired to fight customs fraud. A higher court later overturned the conviction as biased. Benazir, who had made her husband investment minister during her period in office from 1993 to 1996, was abroad at the time of her conviction and chose not to return to Pakistan.
Benazir gets married to Asif Ali Zardari in Karachi in December 1987
Benazir waves to supporters on her arrival from Dubai at the Karachi airport on October 18, 2007

• In 2006 she joined an Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy with her arch-rival Sharif, but the two disagreed over strategy for dealing with military President Pervez Musharraf. Benazir decided it was better to negotiate with Musharraf, while Sharif refused to have any dealings with the general.

• Benazir returned to Pakistan in October 2007 from eight years of self-imposed exile after Musharraf, with whom she had been negotiating over Pakistan’s transition to civilian-led democracy, granted her protection from prosecution in old corruption cases.

• On her return, as Benazir was driving through Karachi, a suicide bomber struck killing 139 supporters and members of her security team.

• On December 26, Benazir vowed to fight for workers’ rights as she took her campaign for January general elections to an industrial belt near the capital.

• On December 27 Benazir was killed in a gun and bomb attack after a rally in Rawalpindi.

(Left) Benazir Bhutto is seen with the then US President George Bush (senior) in Washington, DC in 1989. (Centre) She addresses a news conference with her political rival Nawaz Sharif few days ago in Islamabad. (Right) Benazir and her children with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter Chelsea, in the garden of the Prime Minister’s residence in Islamabad in 1995.


Minutes before her assassination, Benazir leaves after addressing her last public rally in Rawalpindi on Thursday

[raiazlan]