Benazir Bhutto
51 quotes
Biography
Benazir Bhutto was a Pakistani politician who served as the prime minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996. She was the first woman elected to head a democratic government in a Muslim-majority country.
"It's true that General Musharraf opposes my return, seeing me as a symbol of democracy in the country. He is comfortable with dictatorship. I hope better sense prevails."
"Democracy needs support and the best support for democracy comes from other democracies. Democratic nations should... come together in an association designed to help each other and promote what is a universal value — democracy."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"No, I am not pregnant. I am fat. And, as the Prime Minister, its my right to be fat if I want to."
"Democracy is the best revenge."
"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."
"My mother always said democracy is the best revenge."
"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. Benazir Bhutto may have been killed by terrorists, but the terrorists must not be allowed to kill democracy in Pakistan. And this atrocity strengthens our resolve that terrorists will not win there, here or anywhere in the world."
"Bhutto represents everything the fundamentalists hate — a powerful, highly-educated woman operating in a man’s world, seemingly unafraid to voice her independent views and, indeed, seemingly unafraid of anything, including the very real possibility that one day someone might succeed in killing her because of who she is."
"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."
"“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."
"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."
"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."
"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."