Unique Lives and Experiences Lecture Series
Ms Benazir Bhutto
Leader of the Opposition
Speech delivered at Montreal - CANADA
30 April 1998

Ladies and gentlemen,

I came to Harvard in 1969, at the heart of the Vietnam War, with our campus, and all of America, in political and social turmoil. 

In time, I, like many of my classmates, took to the streets, took to the barricades, demanding an end to an unjust war. 

And while I was in America for those four years, I participated and observed in a miracle of democracy -- I saw the power of the people changing policies, changing leaders, and changing history. 

It was that early experience, possibly more than anything else, that shaped my political being, that unalterably shaped my faith in democracy. 

From Harvard I went on to Oxford University in England, where I became the first foreign woman to be elected as President of the Oxford Union. It was my first election, my first victory. 

I had been told that as a foreigner, I could not win and should not run. 

I had been told that as a woman, I could not win, and should not run. 

I refused to accept the arbitrary barriers of bygone eras. 

I knew I could win, and I did. 

Thus, I learned a valuable lesson: never acquiesce to obstacles, especially those that are constructed of bigotry, intolerance and blind, inflexible tradition. 

I also learned another critical lesson in life -- to follow my own political instincts. 

I returned to Pakistan in 1977, hoping to pursue a career in the Foreign Service. Previously, I had toyed with the idea of entering the media world, as my family owned several newspapers. 

I always knew that, after University, I would work. My father encouraged me to have a career. However, I did not want to enter politics. 

My father had been, and was in politics. The politics of South Asia frightened me: assassinations, upheavals, insurgencies, great poverty and inequality. 

I wanted to escape the instability of my youth. I wanted to build a life of order and stability for myself. A life of routine. 

Order, stability, routine held the promise of a structured and secure life, an ordinary life - one far away from the constant shadows and clouds that had cast themselves on my childhood as the daughter of Pakistan's most outspoken Opposition Leader who became President and Prime Minister riding the crest of a popular movement. 

But it was not to be. 

Circumstances soon unfolded that would dictate the path of the rest of my life and change the direction of the future of my country. 

Within one week of my return from Oxford, a military coup toppled the elected democratic government of my father. 

In the early hours of the morning, my sleep was disturbed with the frantic knocking on my bedroom door. It was my mother. Our house was surrounded by tanks. 

A brutal, and cruel dictator had overturned a free and fair election, imposed martial law, and suspended all constitutional rights within my country. My father was arrested, released, re-arrested and finally hanged. 

My party was targeted. Our leaders were murdered, tortured, imprisoned. The lucky ones went into exile. 

It was during this period of turmoil that I was catapulted into a life far different than the one of which I had dreamt. 

A political vacuum was created with the imprisonment of my Father and his colleagues. 

In this vacuum, I saw many members turn towards me to lead rallies, tour the country and seek a restoration of democracy. 

I did not seek leadership, it was thrust upon me. Tragedy, political circumstances, and the forces of history rallied a nation around me. 

The Pakistan Peoples Party provided me, a woman, the opportunity to lead the nation because the PPP had an enlightened, liberal message, proclaiming the equality of men and women. 

This was not an easy task at a time when the military dictatorship insisted that a woman's place was in the house and behind the veil, and not in the work place. 

In November of 1988, my party was swept into office and I was sworn in as the first Muslim woman to head a government anywhere in the world. 

I was 35 years old. I was the only woman in history to be elected to head a government in the Islamic world. 

I was the youngest elected leader in the world. 

I was also a wife and the mother of a baby son. 
We immediately embarked on an ambitious program of political liberalization, an end to press censorship, legalization of trade unions, a commitment to the long neglected social sector with emphasis on education, health delivery and women's rights, and macroeconomic reform. 

However, members of the religious parties and conservative minded segments of the public embarked on a mission to create a religious frenzy against the newly elected government. 

Pamphlets were distributed claiming it was the religious duty of the people in the country to assassinate me, as I was a woman who had usurped a man's place in an Islamic society. 

Several assassination attempts were made including one within the first month of my election at the Lahore airport. 

The removal of the government was branded a religious mission by some of the religious parties. Every Friday, from the mosques, sermons were given inciting the people to overthrow the government. 

And although my opponents fulminated, calling me an Indian agent and an Israeli agent, the people supported me. 

Despite the peoples support, after just 20 months, the entrenched Establishment that had supported the dictatorship, that had refused to bow to the people's will, toppled my government ., However, the new government brought in by the security apparatus of the country failed to give Pakistan stability. It launched bitter battle of persecution against its political opponents. The result was that anarchy and chaos gripped the Nation. Pakistan was on the threshold of being declared a terrorist state and our economy was on the verge of collapse. 

My party did not lose its faith in one nor did I lose my faith in politics or the people of my country. Only three years after the coup against me, I was re-elected a Prime Minister of Pakistan. 

In reflection, I realized that being a leader in a large developing country that had been stifled by the forces of dictatorship was difficult in itself. But being a woman made the task even more formidable. I faced greater challenges than I could have ever imagined. 

Unfortunately, there are still many people out there who would just as soon have us fail, to reinforce their myopic stereotypes restricting the role of women.

I recall with great empathy the words of Baroness Margaret Thatcher, who once said: 

"If a woman is tough, she is pushy. 
If a man is tough, gosh, he's a great leader." 

How often, in Pakistan, in North America, all over the world, we have heard characterizations of women in politics as pushy, as aggressive, as cunning, as shrewd, as strident. 

These words, if applied to men in politics, would be badges of honour! Those of us who have chosen to serve in business, government and other professional careers have broken new ground. 

We have broken glass ceilings, we have broken the stereotypes, and we have been and continue to be prepared to go the extra mile, to be judged by unrealistic standards, to be held more accountable. 

Therefore, women leaders have to outperform, outdistance and out manage men at every level. 
We should not shrink from this responsibility, we should welcome it. 

Welcome it on behalf of women all over the world, in cities and rural villages, in the great universities and those still struggling under the miasma of illiteracy. 

For all who have suffered before, and for all who come after us, we are privileged to be in this special position, in this special time, with unique opportunities to change our countries, our continents, to change the world and inevitably change the future. 

Of course we can sit back, and complain about the problems, the obstacles, the inequity, the bad cards dealt to us. Or we can stand up, roll up our sleeves, and get down to work, accepting the slings and the arrows as part of the job of being a leader at the end of the 20th century.

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