By Dipankar De Sarkar, IANS
London : The Oxford Union, which calls itself the world’s most prestigious debating society, is to hold a special debate next month in memory of a famous past president – slain former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto.
Bhutto was president of the debating society in 1977, the first Asian woman to hold the post.
“She continued to hold the Union in high esteem, and we were honoured by her presence on several occasions both during and after her period as Prime Minister of Pakistan,” the Union said in a brief statement, adding that it was “profoundly sorry” to hear of her assassination.
“At this awful time, the Union sends its condolences and sympathy to her family.”
The 184-year-old Union, which is the Oxford University’s debating society, will organise a debate in Bhutto’s memory on Jan. 17 next year.
Appropriately, the topic will be: ‘This house believes that the ideal state is a secular state.’
Bhutto read politics, philosophy and economics at Lady Margaret Hall from 1973 to 1976 and later became an honorary fellow of the college.
Friends of Bhutto from her Oxford days – many of them famous individuals in their own rights – recounted their association with her and paid rich tributes. Alan Duncan, MP and business affairs spokesman for the opposition Conservative Party, praised Bhutto’s “extraordinary courage and resolve.”
“She felt fatalistically duty-bound to carry on despite the risk,” Duncan told Guardian Unlimited.
Duncan, who worked on Bhutto’s campaign to become Oxford Union president, said Bhutto, a graduate student in her early 20s, drove around Oxford city in an MG sports car.
“I remember driving up the high [street] in this snot-coloured MG. It was rather a slimy green, so we called it snot-coloured.”
Another university friend, former Labour MP Barbara Roche, told Sky News that Bhutto was a “warm, fantastically friendly woman” who loved Britain.
“I remember Benazir as this vibrant young woman … and I will remember my time with her incredibly fondly,” Roche said.
Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, Pakistani-born Bishop of Rochester, who was also close to Bhutto, said she had visited Rochester only a few weeks before returning to Pakistan Oct. 18.
“She gave a very good speech. I was impressed by it, and I thought that if this is the sort of leader Pakistan will get, it is its good fortune,” he said.
Another friend from her Oxford days, writer Tariq Ali, said Bhutto “was tempted” to boycott the coming elections in Pakistan but could lacked the political courage to defy Washington.
“I first met Benazir at her father’s house in Karachi when she was a fun-loving teenager, and later at Oxford. She was not a natural politician and had always wanted to be a diplomat, but history and personal tragedy pushed in the other direction. Her father’s death transformed her,” he wrote in the Guardian newspaper.
“She had become a new person, determined to take on the military dictator of that time. She had moved to a tiny flat in London, where we would endlessly discuss the future of the country. She would agree that land reforms, mass education programmes, a health service and an independent foreign policy were positive constructive aims and crucial if the country was to be saved from the vultures in and out of uniform.
“Her constituency was the poor, and she was proud of the fact.”