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| November 17, 2005 | Thursday | Shawwal 14, 1426 |
Benazir committed to democracy
ISLAMABAD, Nov 16: Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has said that she won’t abandon her struggle for a democratic future for Pakistan for personal gains. “I am continuously told that the web of legal cases woven around my family and myself can be broken if I announce my abdication from political life. I do not do so,” she told an international audience in Abu Dhabi.
She was asked to tell her ‘life story’ at the Global Business Enterprise Leadership Conference, which was addressed by former US president, Bill Clinton and other world personalities also.
Ms Bhutto said, “my father’s courage in the face of death remains with me”, recalling her last meeting with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in his death cell in 1979, she said, “It was then, in that final meeting that I decided to come what may I would continue his mission and his work for a democratic Pakistan with equal rights for all citizens.”
The self-exiled leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) said,”My father believed that I was the one who would right the historic balance (that all civilisations except Islamic had produced woman prime ministers). Despite my reluctance, he clearly saw a political role for me. He groomed me for politics and motivated me with role models,” said Ms Bhutto who was elected prime minister twice.
But both times “elements of the military establishment who wanted to take on the West destabilised the governments I led,” she accused.
Ms Bhutto claimed her second dismissal “changed the course of history” as Afghanistan, which her governments were steering towards moderation, became a haven for terrorists and led to 9/11.
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