Sindh proclaimed the death anniversary of Benazir Bhutto a public holiday

The Sindh government has declared December 27 a public holiday in honor of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Sindh’s acting chief minister, Justice (retd) Maqbool Baqar, approved the province-wide public holiday this time.

Sindh’s chief minister’s spokesman said the entire province will observe a public holiday in honor of Benazir Bhutto. Additionally, a notification has been issued.

The announcement said all Sindh government offices—autonomous or semi-autonomous—would be shuttered.

A gunman and suicide bomber killed Benazir Bhutto following an electoral rally in Rawalpindi on December 27, 2007. A few weeks earlier, Bhutto returned to Pakistan after years of self-imposed exile.

Who was Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto was the eleventh and thirteenth prime minister of Pakistan, holding the position from 1988 to 1990 and 1993 to 1996. The first Muslim country to elect a female leader through democratic means. Assassination of PPP chair or co-chair from early 1980s until 2007. She was a liberal secularist.

Bhutto was the president of the Oxford Union and Harvard Universities before being born in Karachi to affluent Sindhi-Kurdish lords. Her father, Zulfikar Bhutto, won the socialist prime ministership in 1973. She returned to Pakistan before the military assassinated her father in 1977.

Zia-ul-Haq had Bhutto in prison on a frequent basis before she fled to Britain in 1984. She leads both the Democracy Restoration Movement and the PPP, together with her mother, Nusrat. Her Thatcherite economic reform of the socialist PPP policies in 1986 aided the party’s victory in 1988. Her reforms were met with resistance by Ghulam Ishaq Khan, the premier and president of the Islamist party. Khan fired her in 1990 on the grounds of nepotism and corruption. Bhutto spearheaded the resistance movement after intelligence services rigged the election to benefit the extremist Islamic Democratic Alliance.

Benazir Bhutto’s picture gallery

Benazir Bhutto on a visit to Washington, D.C. in 1989. As a politician she took to wearing the white dupatta on her head, a political move to attract support from Islamic clerics.

Benazir at an award ceremony in 1990

Bhutto with United States congressman Gary Ackerman at his office in Washington, c. 1990

At the 1993 meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Cyprus

Bhutto with venture financier and hedge-fund manager Mansoor Ijaz, at Prime Minister’s House, December 1995

Bhutto in 1994 on a visit to Spain

Benazir Bhutto in the United States, 1989

Benazir Bhutto with the Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee in New Delhi, 2003

Benazir Bhutto handing over corruption references against Nawaz Sharif and Shehbaz Sharif to Abdul Jaleel, Director Special Enquiries at the Ehtesab Commission, Islamabad, 1997

Bhutto being interviewed during the Socialist International meeting in 2007

Bhutto (center) speaking to supporters outside her house, November 2007

The Bhutto family mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, where Bhutto was buried alongside several members of her family

A memorial to Bhutto erected at the site of her assassination, featuring a portrait framed by pink tiles

Bhutto meeting with M. M. Chandio in 1996

Bhutto photographed in 1988. Allen stated that had Bhutto died that year, “she would be remembered as a shining example of what youth, fortitude, and idealism can accomplish even in the most brutal and repressive political culture

Bhutto embarking from an airplane at Andrews Air Force Base during her 1989 state visit to the United States. She carried her son; her husband followed behind.

PPP candidate Bhutto won when Nawabshah Sharif’s IJI was ousted in 1993 because of corruption. Women’s rights and economic privatization were major agenda items during her second term in office. President Farooq Leghari removed her government in 1995 after her brother Murtaza was killed and a failed coup attempt was made because of bribery charges against her and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari. After the PPP lost the 1997 election, she fled to Dubai and then to London, where she resided in exile.

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A Swiss court found the defendant guilty in 2003 following corruption investigations. Following discussions with then-President Pervez Musharraf, the US removed her from office in 2007. She later went back to Pakistan to run for office again in 2008. Her campaign denounced both Islamist brutality and civilian use of force.

Death

She was killed in Rawalpindi during a protest. Al-Qaeda accepted responsibility, but the Taliban in Pakistan and renegade intelligence officers were made to pay for their actions. The mausoleum of Garhi Khuda Baksh’s family housed her remains.

An untrustworthy Bhutto causes issues. Pakistan’s Islamist lobby criticized her for her political inexperience, corruption, and secularist and modernizing ambitions. She was popular both domestically and internationally, and she was an early supporter of democracy. Because of her political accomplishments in a nation where men predominate, she became a symbol for women’s rights after her passing.