Benazir Bhutto (Sindhi: بينظير ڀٽو; Urdu: بے نظیر بھٹو‎, pronounced [beːnəˈziːr ˈbʱʊʈʈoː]; 21 June 1953 – 27 December 2007) was a public left-wing politician and stateswoman who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan in two non-consecutive terms from November 1988 until October 1990, and 1993 until her final dismissal on November 1996. She was the eldest daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a former prime minister of Pakistan and the founder of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), which she led.
In 1982, at age 29, Benazir Bhutto became the chairwoman of PPP – a centre-left, democratic socialist political party, making her the first woman in Pakistan to head a major political party. In 1988, she became the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state[1] and was also Pakistan's first (and thus far, only) female prime minister. Noted for her charismatic authority[2] and political astuteness, Benazir Bhutto drove initiatives for Pakistan's economy and national security, and she implemented social capitalist policies for industrial development and growth. In addition, her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets, the denationalisation of state-owned corporations, and the withdrawal of subsidies to others. Benazir Bhutto's popularity waned amid recession, corruption, and high unemployment which later led to the dismissal of her government by conservative President Ghulam Ishaq Khan.
In 1993, Benazir Bhutto was re-elected for a second term after the 1993 parliamentary elections. She survived an attempted coup d'état in 1995, and her hard line against the trade unions and tough rhetorical opposition to her domestic political rivals and to neighbouring India earned her the nickname "Iron Lady";[3] she is also respectfully referred to as "B.B.". In 1996, the charges of corruption levelled against her led to the final dismissal of her government by President Farooq Leghari. Benazir Bhutto conceded her defeat in the 1997 Parliamentary elections and went into self-imposed exile in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in 1998.
After nine years of self-exile, she returned to Pakistan on 18 October 2007, after having reached an understanding with President Pervez Musharraf, by which she was granted amnesty and all corruption charges were withdrawn. Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in a bombing on 27 December 2007, after leaving PPP's last rally in the city of Rawalpindi, two weeks before the scheduled 2008 general election in which she was a leading opposition candidate. The following year, she was named one of seven winners of the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights.[4]

Background
Benazir Bhutto was born at Pinto Hospital[5] in Karachi, Sindh, Dominion of Pakistan on 21 June 1953. She was the eldest child of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was of Sindhi[6][7] ethnicity, and Begum Nusrat Ispahani, a Pakistani of Iranian Kurdish descent.[8][9][10] Her paternal grandfather was Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto. She had three younger siblings: brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz (both of whom became active in politics), and a sister, Sanam.
Bhutto was raised to speak both English and Urdu;[11][12] English was her first language;[12] and while she was fluent in Urdu, it was often colloquial rather than grammatical.[11][12] Despite her family being Sindhi speakers, her Sindhi skills were almost non-existent.[11]
She attended the Lady Jennings Nursery School and Convent of Jesus and Mary in Karachi.[13] After two years at the Rawalpindi Presentation Convent, she was sent to the Jesus and Mary Convent at Murree. She passed her O-level examinations at the age of 15.[14] She then went on to complete her A-Levels at the Karachi Grammar School.
After completing her early education in Pakistan, she pursued her higher education in the United States. From 1969 to 1973 she attended Radcliffe College at Harvard University, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree with cum laude honours in comparative government.[15] She was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa.[14] Bhutto later called her time at Harvard "four of the happiest years of my life" and said it formed "the very basis of her belief in democracy". Later in 1995 as Prime Minister, she arranged a gift from the Pakistani government to Harvard Law School.[16] In 1989, during her first visit, Benazir Bhutto was conferred with her honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) degree from Harvard University in 1989.
In June 2006, she received an Honorary LL.D degree from the University of Toronto.[17]
The next phase of her education took place in the United Kingdom. Between 1973 and 1977 Bhutto studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, during which time she took additional courses in International Law and Diplomacy.[18] After LMH she attended St Catherine's College, Oxford[19] and in December 1976 she was elected president of the Oxford Union, becoming the first Asian woman to head the prestigious debating society.[14] Her undergraduate career was dogged by controversy, partly relating to her father's unpopularity with student politicians.[20] Her election to the presidency of the union was secured only when the poll was re-run after Bhutto had accused the original winner, Vivien Dinham, of canvassing.[21]
On 18 December 1987, she married Asif Ali Zardari in Karachi. The couple had three children: two daughters, Bakhtawar and Asifa, and a son, Bilawal. When she gave birth to Bakhtawar in 1990, she became the first modern head of government to give birth while in office.[22]

Family

 Benazir Bhutto's father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was removed from office following a military coup in 1977 led by the then chief of army General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who imposed martial law but promised to hold elections within three months. Instead of holding general elections, General Zia charged Bhutto with conspiring to murder the father of dissident politician Ahmed Raza Kasuri.
Despite the accusation being "widely doubted by the public",[23] and many clemency appeals from foreign leaders, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged on 4 April 1979 under the effective orders of Supreme Court of Pakistan. Appeals for clemency were dismissed by Chief Martial Law Administrator General Zia-ul-Haq. Benazir Bhutto, her siblings, and her mother were held in a "police camp" until May 1979.[24]


Political campaign

Benazir Bhutto, who had returned to Pakistan after completing her studies, found herself placed under house arrest in the wake of her father's imprisonment and subsequent execution. Having been allowed to return to the United Kingdom in 1984, she became a leader in exile of Pakistan People's Party (PPP). For the first time in the history of Pakistan, a woman was chairwoman of a major political party, though she was unable to make her political presence felt in Pakistan until after the death of General Zia. She succeeded her mother as chairperson of the PPP and the pro-democracy opposition, although a left wing alliance, the Movement for Restoration of Democracy (MRD) to the far-right and ultraconservative military government of General Zia.
[edit]1988 parliamentary elections
Main article: Pakistani general election, 1988
The seat, from which Benazir contested for the safe constituency for the post of Prime Minister in 1980s, namely, NA 207. This seat was considered a Bhutto clan's post and first contested in 1926 by the late Sardar Wahid Bux Bhutto, in the first ever elections in Sindh, British Indian Empire. The elections were for the Central Legislative Assembly of India. Sardar Wahid Bux won, and became not only the first elected representative from Sindh to a democratically elected parliament, but also the youngest member of the Central Legislative Assembly at age 27. Wahid Bux's achievement was monumental as it was he who was the first Bhutto elected to a government, from a seat that would, thereafter, always be contested by his family members.
Therefore, it was he who paved the way for subsequent Bhuttos to enter Pakistani politics. Sardar Wahid Bux went on to be elected to the Bombay Council. After Wahid Bux's untimely and mysterious death at the age of 33, his younger brother Nawab Nabi Bux Bhutto contested from the same seat and remained undefeated until retirement. It was Nabi Bux who then gave this seat to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to contest in 1970. On 16 November 1988, the first open political elections in more than a decade were held and Benazir Bhutto won major provinces of Pakistan and had the largest percentile for seats in the National Assembly— a lower house of Parliament.