Daily Times

Perhaps the biggest testament to the brilliance of Benazir Bhutto is that she became the leader of a country that is inherently patriarchal. In a country in which women are discouraged from even going outside to work let alone become head of the family, Bhutto became head of government. Her rise to power in Pakistan even puts the best of fiction writers to shame as she defied all odds and proved all of her detractors wrong. For a woman brought up in the comforts of an affluent family, few would have guessed that she would brave the unforgiving tyranny of Zia-ul-Haq’s rule. Fewer still would have even imagined that incarceration in the harshest of conditions on the orders of the former military dictator would only strengthen her resolve to fight for her people. Benazir Bhutto proved to be a true daughter of the soil as she prioritised her struggle for Pakistan over and above everything else.

Her two terms in office were by no means smooth sailing. She found herself at the apex of a system she was not at all familiar with. The sly manoeuvrings of the bureaucracy and the interests of the establishment meant that Bhutto did not have as much control of the government as a modern democratically elected prime minister usually has. And the incomplete transition of power to civil government in the 90s militated against an assertive civilian prime minister. The preceding decade of military rule had reversed institutional development and put in place a system that was, in substance, undemocratic. This can be gauged by the presence of the infamous Article 58 2(b) in the constitution, which empowered the president of the republic to dismiss the government of the day. This was in fact a direct channel of oversight of the establishment, and history is now witness to the way pretences were used to twice dismiss Bhutto’s government.

The period of democratic continuity that Pakistanis are enjoying now is in no small part a product of the sacrifices that politicians like Benazir Bhutto gave for the country. While there is no doubt that there still is a long to go for Pakistan to be a democracy not just in form but also in substance, nevertheless it was Benazir Bhutto who did not let the slogan for democratic government to die down during the two periods of military rule of her political life, and hence it is to her that the
Pakistani people owe their gratitude to for the naturalisation of democracy in the public discourse.

Furthermore, it was Benazir Bhutto who first raised her voice against extremism in Pakistan and who continued to do so until her death. The most obvious reason why she was targeted, and martyred, by religious terrorists was because she was the biggest threat to their continued existence. Bhutto was the only Pakistani politician who could convince the western world of her sincerity to fight terrorism in Pakistan without any distinction. And her certitude was what was needed the most during the tumultuous years preceding the end of Musharraf’s rule, when religious extremism and terrorism posed the gravest of threats to the internal security of Pakistan. Bhutto did not cower at the threats from terrorists. She returned to Pakistan and sent them the message that there was one politician in Pakistan who would not capitulate. Bhutto did not shy away from giving the biggest sacrifice a person could ever give for their country, and it is because of this that her legacy is still alive in the hearts of millions of Pakistanis. *