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      • After her father’s execution in 1979, Bhutto became the titular head of her father’s party, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), and endured frequent house arrest from 1979 to 1984. In exile from 1984 to 1986, she returned to Pakistan after the lifting of martial law and soon became the foremost figure in the political opposition to Zia.
      www.britannica.com/biography/Benazir-Bhutto
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  2. He became the chairman of Pakistan People's Party in 2007, following his mother's assassination. Bilawal belongs to the Bhutto family, a prominent political family of Pakistan and is the son of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and President Asif Ali Zardari, and the grandson of former President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. [1]

  3. Sep 21, 2024 · Bilawal Bhutto Zardari earned the distinction of becoming the youngest Foreign Minister of Pakistan, a position he achieved through his political wisdom and prudence. When he assumed this role in 2022, he was only 34 years and 3 months old.

    • Overview
    • Born into politics
    • Leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)

    Bilawal Bhutto Zardari (born September 21, 1988, Karachi, Pakistan) is a dynastic figure in Pakistani politics—the son of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and former president Asif Ali Zardari—and the chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP; 2007– ) who briefly served as Pakistan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs (2022–23).

    Bhutto Zardari first became known through his dynastic pedigree. His maternal grandfather was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who, as president (1971–73) and prime minister (1973–77) of Pakistan, was one of the country’s most consequential leaders. His mother, Benazir Bhutto, was Pakistan’s first female prime minister (1988–90; 1993–96). In fact, she was pregnant with Bilawal when she launched her first campaign for the office, and she gave birth to him two months later. His father, Asif Ali Zardari, was also a political figure, serving as president from 2008 to 2013; he was the son of Hakim Ali Zardari, a well-known businessman and politician. Both the Bhutto and the Zardari families had been prominent landowners in the Sindh region.

    The political success of Bilawal’s family in the late 1980s and early 1990s coincided with Pakistan’s return to democracy and, as a result, with increased public scrutiny of politicians. Thus, his family’s success invited ridicule and controversy as the reins of government shifted bitterly back and forth between Benazir Bhutto, whose support base was concentrated in Sindh province, and Nawaz Sharif, whose support base lay in Punjab province. Having been accused of corruption, money laundering, and even murder, Asif Ali Zardari was imprisoned in 1997. Bhutto decided to flee Pakistan in 1999, taking Bilawal and his sisters, Bakhtawar and Aseefa, to live in exile in London and Dubai. Zardari joined them when he was released from prison in 2004.

    While the family was in exile, Bilawal Zardari began studying at Christ Church, Oxford, in 2007. Pakistan was gearing up for parliamentary elections at that time, and Bhutto decided to contest them. She returned to Pakistan in October and began campaigning. But on December 27, weeks before the election was set to be held, she was killed in a suicide attack on her motorcade.

    Days later Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who had added Bhutto to his surname, was appointed chair of the PPP. He was billed as the heir to the Bhutto line, but his young age and lack of experience called for a seasoned regent. Accordingly, his father was elected cochair of the party and began directing it while Bhutto Zardari finished his studies in the United Kingdom. In September 2008 Zardari was elected president of Pakistan—“My mother always said, democracy is the best revenge,” Bhutto Zardari had told the press months earlier—and in 2013 Zardari became the first elected president in the country’s history to serve a full term.

    Meanwhile, Bhutto Zardari completed a bachelor’s degree in history in 2010, and, at 21 years of age, he returned to live in Pakistan for the first time since he was 11 years old. He began training for political life, including expanding his knowledge of Pakistan, improving his command of Urdu and Sindhi, and occasionally putting what he learned into practice by giving speeches at rallies. He continued to spend significant amounts of time in the United Kingdom, however, as he undertook graduate coursework, earning a master’s degree from Oxford (2015).

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    As the PPP was grooming its nominal leader, the party fell into disfavour. Its five-year rule from 2008 to 2013 was marked by widespread discontent over weak economic development, rampant corruption, and government collaboration with the unpopular U.S.-led war on terrorism. Voters flocked to the Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PML-N) party, which, under the provincial government of Shehbaz Sharif in Punjab (2008–18), had earned a reputation for able administration and fighting corruption. Meanwhile, much of the PPP’s support in the north of the country was siphoned off by the populism of Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. Nonetheless, the PPP’s acceptance of its loss in the 2013 parliamentary elections led to a historic moment for Pakistan, as the PPP oversaw the country’s first democratic transfer of power.

    • The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
  4. She was the first woman elected to head a democratic government in a Muslim-majority country. Ideologically a liberal and a secularist, she chaired or co-chaired the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) from the early 1980s until her assassination in 2007.

  5. Bhutto was murdered on 27 December 2007 by a 15-year-old suicide bomber called Bilal. She had just finished an election rally in Rawalpindi when he approached her convoy, shot at her and blew...

  6. Dec 27, 2012 · The heir to one of South Asia's most famous political dynasties must do more than just follow in his forebears' footsteps. Mr Bhutto Zardari had just turned 19 when his mother died in a gun...