No politics for Bhutto’s daughter
ONCE in a while, stories of famous people and their family members find their way on the pages of The Fiji Times.
This happened on Thursday, June 16, 1977 when a story of a prime minister's daughter kept readers hooked.
She was Benazir Bhutto, who at the time, was a graduating student at St Catherine’s College Oxford.
It was reported that university had become her home for four years.
Otherwise, she would have exchanged the cloistered calm of the university for the excitement and danger of public life in strifetorn Pakistan, where her dad, Ali Bhutto was prime minister.
The story said she was to join her country’s foreign service after four years of study at Oxford where she got a degree in politics and philosophy and presidency of the Oxford Union.
“It has been a very valuable experience,” The Fiji Times quoted Benazir, 23, as saying.
“On the course, you’re meeting all the people you will have to deal with in years to come.”
She said the idea of following her father’s footsteps in the political arena did not appeal to her.
“He has always said he wouldn’t like us to go into politics. Judging by what I’ve seen him go through, I think I agree.”
“Anyway, I’m an intelligent, thinking being in my own right and I would like to prove that I can do something alone. I don’t think I could do that in politics at the moment.”
Benazir was described as a spirited defender of her father’s somewhat tarnished reputation.
“He is not a dictator. The hatred that the opposition leaders feel for him comes from their inferiority complexes.”
“They are all old men who have been hanging around since 1947. My fathers is only 49.”
“By the standards of Pakistan, I should be married now. The great age for getting married is 18 – now I’m too old.”
Benazir later became the PM of Pakistan in 1988, becoming the first woman to lead a democratic government in a Muslim-majority country.