By Manish Chand, IANS
The first woman elected to head a Muslim nation, former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto was often seen as a beacon of democracy and moderation in a military dominated country and was poised to play a starring role in the changing political landscape of her country when the assassins brutally cut short her life.
Born in Sindh and the political heir to her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, one of the subcontinent’s most famous dynasties, Bhutto, who honed her mind in the stimulating environs of Oxford and Harvard and read Mills and Boons romances and classics with equal fervour, was a reluctant politician till the execution of her father by the then ruler Zia-ul-Haq in 1979 forced her to change her mind.
The intrepid woman she was, and fully aware of the mantle of her charismatic father’s democratic legacy, she braved rigours of solitary confinement for five years and emerged out of the crucible to set up a Pakistan People’s Party office in London.
Zia’s death in an air-crash in 1988 vaulted her into the hot seat after she won the elections the same year.
Young, glamorous and a gifted orator who knew how to work up the masses and classes alike, Bhutto became the youngest woman to lead a country when she first became prime minister of Pakistan first in 1988 at 35. Not that she was new to the intricacies of statecraft and diplomacy – as a pink-faced teenager, the tall attractive girl Bhutto accompanied her father on a visit to India to sign the historic Simla Pact and became the star attraction in the Indian media.
Her second stint in power as prime minister lasted for barely three years from 1993 to 1996 when she was dismissed by the president again on corruption charges.
During her two spells of power, Bhutto was passionate about promoting better ties with India and counted the who’s who of the Indian political elite among her friends, but her strident rhetoric on Kashmir, a territory claimed by both India and Pakistan, exposed her to charges of being insincere.
Out of power, controversy shadowed her political career as the powers-that-be sought to embroil her in a raft of corruption charges, involving money laundering and plunder of national wealth during her stint in power, mostly involving her husband Asif Zardari.
Bhutto’s political ascent, her increasing popularity as a fiery speaker and global visibility as the first female prime minister of a Muslim country was, however, not to last long. Her husband, many say, turned out to be her undoing as Zardari, known contemptuously as 10 per center (for allegedly skimming
10 per cent commission on fat government contracts when his wife was in power) was accused of stealing millions and stashing away ill-gotten wealth in many secret bank accounts abroad.
Most of about 18 corruption and criminal cases against Zardari had been proved in court with Bhutto’s husband serving at least eight years in jail. He was freed on bail in 2004, but Bhutto’s image was stained, some would say, beyond repair. Her protestations of innocence were greeted with sceptical sneer and she was consigned to political limbo, forced to shuttle between London and Dubai, by an assertive President Pervez Musharraf.
However, the sacking of chief justice of the Pakistan Supreme Court in March this year by Musharraf sparked massive civil unrest and the resurgence of extremists and terrorists that created political conditions ripe for her return in October. As the cursed politics of Pakistan would have it, it turned out to be a bloody return with her first public rally targeted by suicide bombers and a wary military-intelligence complex, who feared her political ascendance, watching her every move.
The next time round, she was not so lucky Thursday when an assassin’s bullets finally got her, bringing to an end a hopeful moment in Pakistan’s political life and leaving a deep imprint on the collective political psyche of the subcontinent.