Benazir BhuttoFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Asifa Bhutto Zardari)
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11th and 13th
Prime Minister of PakistanIn office
18 October 1993 – 5 November 1996President
Wasim Sajjad (Acting)
Farooq LeghariPreceded by
Moeenuddin Ahmad Qureshi (Acting)Succeeded by
Malik Meraj Khalid (Acting)
In office
2 December 1988 – 6 August 1990President
Ghulam Ishaq KhanPreceded by
Muhammad Khan JunejoSucceeded by
Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi (Acting)
Leader of the OppositionIn office
17 February 1997 – 12 October 1999Preceded by
Nawaz SharifSucceeded by
Fazl-ur-RehmanIn office
6 November 1990 – 18 April 1993Preceded by
Khan Abdul Wali KhanSucceeded by
Nawaz SharifChairman of the
Pakistan Peoples PartyIn office
12 November 1982 – 27 December 2007Preceded by
Nusrat BhuttoSucceeded by
Asif Ali Zardari
Bilawal Bhutto ZardariPersonal detailsBorn21 June 1953
Karachi,
Sind, PakistanDied27 December 2007 (aged 54)
Rawalpindi,
Punjab, PakistanCause of death
AssassinationResting place
Bhutto family mausoleumPolitical party
Pakistan Peoples PartySpouse(s)
Asif Ali Zardari
(m. 1987)Relations
Children
Parents
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Father)
Nusrat Bhutto (Mother)Education
Harvard University
University of OxfordSignature
This article contains Sindhi text, written from right to left with some letters joined. Without proper
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Sindhi script.
This article contains Urdu text. Without proper
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Urdu script.
Benazir Bhutto (
Sindhi: بينظير ڀُٽو;
Urdu: بینظِیر بُھٹّو; Urdu pronunciation:
[beːnəˈziːr ˈbʱʊʈ.ʈoː]; 21 June 1953 – 27 December 2007) was a
Pakistani politician who served as
Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996. She was the first woman to head a democratic government in a
Muslim majority nation. Ideologically a
liberal and a
secularist, she chaired or co-chaired the
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) from the early 1980s until her
assassination in 2007.
Of mixed
Sindhi and
Kurdish parentage, Bhutto was born in
Karachi to a
politically important, wealthy aristocratic family. She studied at
Harvard University and the
University of Oxford, where she was President of the
Oxford Union. Her father, the PPP leader
Zulfikar Bhutto, was elected Prime Minister on a
socialist platform in 1973. She returned to Pakistan in 1977, shortly before her father was
ousted in a military coup and executed. Bhutto and her mother
Nusrat took control of the PPP and led the country's
Movement for the Restoration of Democracy; Bhutto was repeatedly imprisoned by
Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's military government and then exiled to Britain in 1984. She returned in 1986 and—influenced by
Thatcherite economics—transformed the PPP's platform from a socialist to a liberal one, before leading it to victory in the
1988 election. As Prime Minister, her attempts at reform were stifled by
conservative and
Islamist forces, including President
Ghulam Ishaq Khan and the powerful military. Her administration was accused of corruption and nepotism and dismissed by Khan in 1990. Intelligence services rigged
that year's election to ensure a victory for the conservative
Islamic Democratic Alliance (IJI), at which Bhutto became
Leader of the Opposition.
After the IJI government of Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif was also dismissed on corruption charges, Bhutto led the PPP to victory in the
1993 elections. Her second term oversaw economic privatization and attempts to advance
women's rights. Her government was damaged by several controversies, including the assassination of her brother
Murtaza, a
failed 1995 coup d'état, and a further bribery scandal involving her and her husband
Asif Ali Zardari; in response to the latter, President
Farooq Leghari dismissed her government. The PPP lost the
1997 election and in 1998 she went into self-exile in
Dubai. A widening corruption inquiry culminated in a 2003 conviction in a Swiss court. Following United States-brokered negotiations with President
Pervez Musharraf, she returned to Pakistan in 2007 to compete in the
2008 elections; her platform emphasized civilian oversight of the military and opposition to growing Islamist violence. After a political rally in
Rawalpindi, she was assassinated. The
Salafi jihadi group
al-Qaeda claimed responsibility, although the involvement of the
Pakistani Taliban and rogue elements of the intelligence services was widely suspected. She was buried at her
family mausoleum in
Garhi Khuda Baksh.
Bhutto was a controversial figure. She was often criticized as being politically inexperienced and
corrupt, and faced much opposition from Pakistan's Islamist lobby for her secularist and modernizing agenda. In the early years of her career she was nevertheless domestically popular and also attracted support from Western nations, for whom she was a champion of democracy. Posthumously, she came to be regarded as an icon for women's rights due to her political success in a male-dominated society.
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