The Courage to Lead
The Power of Women Conference - Ottawa, Canada
April  8, 1999

Honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen.

It is a pleasure and a privilege to visit Ottawa and address this distinguished gathering of women.  

I thank you for your kind invitation, and for your warm welcome. 

I am no stranger to North America.  

I spent four of the happiest years of my life as a student at an American college.

In all that has happened in my life since my graduation from Harvard 25 years ago, with all the transitions in the world, the carefree days on the Harvard Yard seem a distant dream.

I want to take this opportunity with you today to take stock  -- of my own life, of the political situation in Pakistan, and of Pakistan’s position as we cross into a new political era.

For those of us who fought and died for democracy and freedom in Pakistan, the return of a fascist, one-man dictatorship is painful beyond comprehension.

For nearly 24 months, the regime has used coercion and repression to silence its critics and to censor the press through hidden threats and open indictments.

It has made no secret of its desire to eliminate the leader of the opposition with a view to deny the people of Pakistan an alternate.

For this purpose a special law has been passed with retrospective effect. The regime has indulged in obstruction of justice by fabricating evidence and torturing witnesses into committing perjury.

I know it has become the fashion both in the developed and developing world over the last decade, to destroy leaders’ reputations by innuendo, allegation and rumour. 

I think the new term of art is “the politics of personal destruction.”

Governments rise and fall not on performance but on personality, not by accountability but allegation, not on facts but on slurs. 

The attacks against me are a more extreme version of what seems to be a universal deterioration of civil dialogue in politics, not just in Pakistan, but all over our world. 

The search for political consensus, the main characteristic of a democratic society, has degenerated into partisan hysteria, a rule or ruin philosophy.

The fascist government of Pakistan has attempted to impose dictatorship. In this attempt, it has failed to deliver on governance.

This has resulted in total incompetence and the failure to manage the economy and the social infrastructure of the country, forcing many Pakistanis to leave the country for safer shores, including those of Canada. As Pakistanis who are affluent leave the country, they take their capitol with them.

The flight of capitol from my land is the most serious in a land known for its poverty and backwardness.

It has been caused by the foolish decision of the regime to nationalize foreign currency accounts to reduce the national foreign debt.

The foreign currency curbs have only curbed growth.

The international business community now fully understands that the agenda of the Nawaz regime in Pakistan is to control the commanding heights of Pakistan's economy through its friends and cronies.

And that he will do this at any cost to our homeland.

Note:

1) Scandalization of IPP's

2) State Department Human Rights Report

3) HRCP Report

Thanks to Nawaz Sharif, the country is being isolated in the international community. 

He has made us a pariah in the community of nations.

It is painful for me in Pakistan, but it is the people of Pakistan who have suffered the most.

A government sponsored mob, attacked the Supreme Court of Pakistan, forcing the Chief Justice to flee the courtroom. His Crime? For hearing a corruption case against the Prime Minster.

Newspapers, critical of the regime, have had their offices raided and their employees threatened with cases of financial impropriety. 

A woman shopping at a marketplace in the city of Karachi  had her arms slashed for wearing a short sleeved dress.

Girl students in government schools have been forced to wear the veil.

Family courts headed by women judges have been closed.

Parliamentarians have been baton-charged by police, some requiring hospitalization because of head injuries.

When I led a march in defense of the free press, the regime ordered the police to teargas, baton charge and hurl bricks at me.

And now, the Nawaz Regime is seeking to undermine Pakistan’s constitution through passage of a bill cloaked in Religion with the purpose of concentrating all powers in the hands of the Prime Minister, who will have the power to “proscribe what is right and what is wrong.”  

Once again an illegitimate dictator is attempting to exploit and manipulate Islam for his political advantage. 

Once again, a Pakistani dictator is attempting to destroy democracy and replace it with religious fanaticism.

The right of individual choice, of individual freedoms is under assault even as I speak to you today.

I and my Party will continue to resist these efforts to destroy democracy, to destroy individual choice, to destroy religious tolerance. 

This is the nature of my life, this is the price of responsibility  -- and I accept it.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I had never wished to enter public life.

It was nothing that I sought. 

I had hoped, at Harvard and later at Oxford, that I could pursue a career in journalism or in the Foreign Service. 

Forces beyond my control shaped the direction of my future. 

Personal choice and personal happiness was replaced by social responsibility and political obligation.

Ladies and gentlemen, as many of you know, I am a daughter of the East who was educated and spent significant parts of my life in the West.

In a sense, I am a bridge of two cultures, two worlds, and two pasts. 

As a child I attended a private school in Karachi, run by Catholic nuns, sheltered from much of the turmoil of early Pakistan, a shy and insulated girl. 

When I was but sixteen years old, my father determined I should not be denied the Islamic right of knowledge, and thus he sent me abroad for higher education, and I was admitted into America’s premier university, Harvard College.

All my life, and even spiritually to this day, it was my father who guided me, who mentored me, who encouraged me, who gave me the strength and confidence to express my views.

His soul and his values are alive within me, wherever I go.

It is interesting that the person who insured that I would break lose of the constrains of my culture and gender, was not a woman, but a man.

A wise man who was and is the greatest role model in my life -- Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

My travel to America when I was 16 was a true awakening.

I walked into a very new world.

I was alone for the first time in my life.

The pampered child was suddenly cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing  -- independent and self-sufficient.

I was exposed to the most brilliant and respected professors, to the most compelling ideas, to a demanding curriculum, to the most accomplished students in all of North America.

I was for the first time in my life living together with strangers, in a dormitory of peers, where I had to take care of myself but also participate in an intellectual village.

It was the first time in my life that I was in an environment where women were treated as full participants in society in every way.

I was also thrust into a political environment that was unlike anything I had ever known.

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 to Oxford, 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 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.

But circumstances would soon unfold 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.

Our house was surrounded by tanks. We did not know if we would live or die, if we would survive to see the dawn of the next day’s sun.

A brutal, criminal 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.

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

In this vacuum, I saw many members of our Party 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.

I was fortunate in my campaign to lead my nation, as my name was recognized throughout the country -- and the same people who supported my Father's vision of a modern Islamic democracy rallied around me to continue the struggle.

I was fortunate in that a political party with roots in all four federating units of the country.

It presented me with a national platform from which to launch not only the struggle for democracy but my own political career. 

I also was fortunate that my father had provided me with a strong education, and the means to be economically independent.

This allowed me the time and resources to strengthen our political base.

Exposure to modern, liberal ideas and a liberal education in some of the best schools in the world certainly helped me in preparing to play the leader’s role. 

But it was the real, practical education which I received from my father, who took great interest in my upbringing and initiating me in debates on major contemporary issues, which prepared me most.

However, in a sense, I had no control over the events which would quickly change my fate. My course was no longer mine.

I was catapulted into politics by the force of circumstance.

When my father was executed, I was called upon by the people to take charge and pursue the mission of my father for freedom and constitutional rule.

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 behind the house and behind the veil -- not in the work place.

The different approach between our opponents and supporters on the role of women in a Muslim Society helped me in enlarging and co-opting a liberal constituency in a Muslim country where tradition and tribal customs had played a pre dominant role.

Many believe that South Asian women leaders have inherited leadership through assassination of loved ones in the family.

The other part is that each of us had to win our badges of honours by paying a political price.

I paid that political price, spending nearly six years in one form of imprisonment or another, mostly in solitary confinement, in an all pervasive climate of fear and dread.

Senior members of the party could not reconcile themselves to being led by "a chit of a woman" to use their phrase.

Bruising battles for leadership continued with the youth and second tier of the leadership supporting me over the senior leaders.

The downside of a politics born of struggle was the inadequate exposure I, and my young supporters, had to the workings of the elite and influential groups in the countries social and economic and administrative structure.

Due to the dread of the mixing with the opposition, members of the business community, bureaucracy military and judiciary kept clear of me.

I had little experience of government, not having worked myself up the ladder as a democratic system allows.

And this would remain a vulnerability when the party achieved power.

However, I gained much experience in organizational and managerial matters in running the PPP, the nation's largest and most popular party, against all obstacles.

In government, I found that the elite groups refused to accept me as a leader, simply because I was a woman, one which, perforce to circumstances, they did not know. My youth went against me too.

I remember, when I was elected my supporters were jubilant. They danced in the streets with joy. But not my opponents.

A well known religious scholar from a leading Muslim country issued an edict criticizing my election and declaring that it was un-Islamic for a woman to govern a Muslim country.

Members of the religious parties and those who had fought in the Afghan Jehad against Soviet occupation turned their political guns on me. They embarked on a mission create a religious frenzy against the authority of a woman ruler.

They printed pamphlets calling upon the people, as their religious duty, to assassinate me. They said 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.

Attempts at airports. Attempts even in Parliament.

A group of Islamic scholars within the region sought to have Pakistan thrown out of the OIC because it had violated Islamic tradition by voting for a woman.

We pre-empted this plan by a hair's breath. It was a plan against me but also against the right of all Muslim women to equal opportunity and representation at the highest levels of political office.

If I thought time was a healer, I was wrong. Every Friday, from the mosques, sermons were given inciting the people to overthrow the government.

I was saved only because the Party I led was a democratic party.

It had a popular base that provided the popular support to counter the extremist threat. We proved in Pakistan that the barriers of tradition could be broken.

We proved in Pakistan that opportunists and fanatics would not dictate our agenda. It was a victory for women every where. Especially Muslim women.

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

When I became Prime Minister in November of 1988 I was the youngest elected chief executive anywhere in the world, and the first Muslim woman to head a government in modern history.  I was 35 years old.

That I was a woman had precipitated an early general election. (Gen. Zia and expectancy)

I have three children. As I was a woman leader in a society where men wished to exploit my condition when bearing a child, I had to keep each pregnancy a state secret.

I could not share the joy of expecting a baby openly or go shopping for prams or baby clothes. I could not afford morning sickness. Instead of being a woman, I had to act tougher than a man.

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 first government, at a time when world opinion was distracted by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.

However, the new government brought in by the security apparatus of the country fail to give Pakistan stability.

In a pattern which was to repeat itself in 1997, it launched bitter battle of persecution against its political opponents. My husband was arrested. My Parliamentarians kidnapped. Women activists tortured. Governance neglected.

Anarchy and chaos gripped the Nation.

Pakistan was on the threshold of being declared a terrorist state. Our economy was on the verge of collapse.

My party did not lose its faith in me nor did I lose my faith in politics or the people of my country.

Within three years I was re-elected a Prime Minister of Pakistan.

In reflection, I realize 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.

It is not easy being a woman anywhere.

In many ways there are still hurdles for women to jump in Canada, although you too have elected a woman Prime Minister.

It is not easy being a successful woman in politics, education, health or finance.

Moreover, for women leaders, the obstacles are greater, the demands are greater, the barriers are greater, and the double standards are greater. 

And ultimately, the expectations of those who look at us as role models are greater as well. For all women, it is critical that we succeed. Unfortunately, there are still many 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, Canada, 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 the stereotypes, and we have been 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, in rural villages and in the great universities and centers of learning, arts and culture. 

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.

I have not found that there are any male leaders who will agree there are differences in styles between male and female leaders.

But we female leaders, and I speak from my conversations with other women leaders, believe that female leaders are stronger and more determined.

I personally believe that women leaders are more generous and forgiving.  Male leaders tend to be more inflexible, and rigid. 

However, ironically, I have met many male leaders who feel that women leaders are actually more rigid.

  Male leaders can learn from female counterparts how to keep people together.

Women leaders have a tradition and an historical legacy of bringing up families and creating a sense of family community and unity. This is what men leaders need to learn from women leaders.

I once asked a male leader what we female leaders could learn from them and he replied in a simple word “intrigues”. 

Just as men and women can learn from one another, so can leaders from different cultures, regions and religions.

We in the East, feel that there are greater complexities in the politics of the East than there are politics of the West.

In leading people from different cultures, a leader has to keep in view and have a sensitivity toward the values of different cultural groups and make sure that the different cultural groups feel that their cultural values and mores remain intact. 

A leader must also strengthen the common points to bind the different cultures together.

He or she must make pluralistic diversity into a mosaic that is strengthened, not weakened, by differences amongst our people.   

In the West, people often take free choice, free speech, and human rights for granted, as a matter of right.

In the East, the leaders have not only had to battle the different political parties, but also resist the entrenched establishment.

Since many countries in the East have had long experiences of military dictatorships, their security apparatus is strong and often resists change.

Civil/military relations is something that the East and West can learn from each other.

The West needs to appreciate that the East, and I speak of the Muslim Nations in the East, are part of the same Judaic, Christian Civilization.

Ours is a religion that sanctifies Abraham, Moses and Jesus as Prophets.

When the Jews were being persecuted all over Europe, it is within the Islamic societies  -- from Turkey to Kazakhstan  -- that Jews sought and were granted sanctuary…and they were welcomed as brothers and sisters, to live free and prosperous.  

A loving and tolerant religion whose image has been tarnished by fanatics on the fringe who preach the politics of poison.

Of course there are extremists in each society, in each country and in each century.

I am surprised to see even in America a rise in extremism -- in Christian extremism.

At the UN conference in Cairo on population planning it was surprising to see the Christian and Islamic extremists unite in seeking to deny women control of their own bodies.

Extremists, operating even now along the border of Canada, murder doctors for providing women with choice over their own reproductive life.

It is the misfortune of the Information Age that while we think we have more information for each other when in fact we have less.

We have less knowledge because the Information Age broadcast the extreme rather than the mainstream.

The mainstream in the East is very much the mainstream in the West if not more so.

The mainstream in the East is grounded in faith, in family, in our dreams for the future.

Men and women of moderation and goodwill in the East and West seek universal peace and development. It is the extremists who preach the politics of hate and violence.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have attempted, throughout my career, to combine the best of many cultures, the richness of disparate experiences.

To build for my people the ability to compete and thrive in the challenging new technological era.

Introducing the world of modern communication into Pakistan was one of the goals of my party.

We heralded the information revolution by introducing fax machines, digital pagers, optic fiber, cellular telephones, satellite dishes, Internet, the e-mail and even CNN into Pakistan.

I was proud of Pakistan when under my leadership of de-regulation; Pakistan integrated into the global economy and became one of the ten emerging capital markets of the world.

In modernizing our economy we learnt much from the West: introducing private sector financial institutions, computerizing the stock market and in Central Revenues Department, making the State Bank autonomous and referring the Corporate Law Authority.

When my government assumed management of the economy in 1993, the country’s growth rate rested at a dismal 2.0%. We tripled that to 6% in three short years.

We were able to reduce our fiscal deficit three points in three years, from 8% to 5% of GDP.

We doubled tax revenue from 7.2% to 14.1%, a great accomplishment.

And due to the investment-oriented policies of the PPP government, we attracted more than $3 billion of direct foreign investment in Pakistan – much of it from Canada.

In providing a big-push to infrastructure development, our primary target was the energy sector.

The World Bank called our energy infrastructure program a model to the entire developing world.

And it is the social sector that our accomplishments have the most special meaning to me.  Possibly as a woman and as a mother I found the human cost of social neglect shocking.

Increasing literacy rates from 26% to 35% was one of our goals.

Securing women's rights by signing the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women in Beijing was another.

Prosecuting perpetuators of domestic violence helped make Pakistan a more just society.

As did recruiting women for up to 70% of teaching jobs in the new primary schools in a country where only one third could write their names with a pen.

We introduced the world of computer literacy to prepare our people for a new century, a New World.

As a woman and mother, I was particularly concerned about the conditions of health for the children of Pakistan. 

Approximately 50 million child deaths are predicted in South Asia over the next decade.

Of that astounding number, 30 million are avoidable if the countries of the region embark on serious health education and health delivery programs. 

In order to promote mother and child health care, we recruited and trained 50,000 village health workers in the far-flung villages of Pakistan.

With the help of this army of women, we iodized salt, eliminated polio and reduced the population growth rate from 3.1% to 2.6%.

We embarked an ambitious effort to immunize the children of Pakistan from a host of child hood diseases brought under control in other parts of the world. 

I wondered, “how many potential Nobel Prize winners will be among the 30 million avoidable deaths? 

How many great authors will never live to write their novels and poetry? 

How many prospective great scientists who might go on to cure AIDS, to conquer cancer, to prevent strokes, will be among the thirty million children who could very well die if we did not act now?”

The WHO gave me a gold medal in recognition of Pakistan’s effort in the field of health.

To protect women in society, we established special women’s police forces and women’s courts, to hear with understanding and sympathy cases of domestic violence and domestic abuse. 

Courts and police forces for women, staffed by women.

And we created women’s banks for women entrepreneurs, empowering them with the tools to start their own businesses.  And yes, we allowed men to deposit their funds in the women’s banks –and they did.

It was a miraculous transformation of a society, a transformation that cannot be negated by disinformation and personal attacks on me. 

What we accomplished  -- concretely and specifically  -- is my legacy to the people of Pakistan. 

We opened up education, and we opened up markets.

We opened up opportunity and we opened up foreign investment. 

We opened economic development and emancipated our rural villages. 

Above all, we opened up minds.  We opened up individual choice.

We attacked prejudice and discrimination.

Ladies and gentlemen, leadership and courage are often synonymous.

Ultimately, leadership depends on action, daring to take actions that are necessary but unpopular, to challenge the status quo for a brighter future.

To do what is right, by educating and moving an electorate, empathizing with the moods, the needs, the wants, the hopes and the aspirations of a surging mass of humanity.

Understanding the needs of ones country people to paint a new vision on the canvas of political life in a nation's history.

Ladies and gentlemen,

In just 267 days, we will witness only for the third time in recorded history the momentous turning of the millennium.

Where and what will we be, at that extraordinary moment, when the huge ball drops and the year 2000 lights up the winter sky?

Will we be prisoners of the mind-set of the past, or will we be liberated to the endless possibilities of an historic future?

Our generation, the first in recorded history, is fundamentally empowered with the control of its own destiny.

The chains of the past  -- colonialism, ignorance, dictatorship and sexism  -- are broken.

The world has finally accepted, in the words of Robert Browning, that

“Ignorance is not innocence, but sin.”

We must persevere and not be intimidated by fear, not constrained by obstacles.

I remember the last words of my father to me, writing to me from his death cell, quoting  Robert F. Kennedy on Tennyson:

“Every generation has a central concern, whether to end war, erase racial injustice, or improve the conditions of working people.  They demand a government that speaks directly and honestly to its citizens.

The possibilities are too great, the stakes too high, to bequeath to the coming generation only the prophecy lament of Tennyson:

‘Ah, what shall I be at fifty should nature let me live...If I find the world so bitter at twenty-five.”

I remember my father’s words. I will continue to speak, to help build a newer world.

What will that world be?

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I see a Third Millennium where illiteracy, hunger and malnutrition are finally conquered.

I see a Third Millennium where human rights are universal, and self-determination unabridged anywhere on the planet.

I see a Third Millennium where consensus and comity once again guide the national and international debate.

I see a Third Millennium where government gets on with the business of addressing the pressing needs of the people.

I see a Third Millennium where every child is planned, wanted, nurture and supported.

I see a Third Millennium of tolerance and pluralism, where religions respect other religions.

And above all, I see a Third Millennium where the birth of a girl child is welcomed with the same joy as the birth of a boy.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

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