Crans Montana Prix de la Foundation
Miss Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari: 28th June 2008
Response by Miss Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari following presentation of the Prix de la Foundation to Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Shaheed.
Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentleman,
It is with great pride and sadness that I accept this award on behalf of my mother, Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Shaheed. It goes without saying that I wish that she were here – standing where I am now standing – to receive it. I know that she would have been greatly honoured to have been recognised amongst so many other world leaders. That she has been singled out to receive the award posthumously as ‘a martyr for liberty, inseparable from world history’, is also a great honour for our family, my father, Asif Ali Zardari, my brother, Bilawal and my sister, Aseefa.
As you know my mother was a martyr for liberty. She returned to Pakistan last year to fight elections in order to enable Pakistan to resume, once more, a democratic system of government. As leader of the populist Pakistan Peoples Party, her participation was essential in order that the election should have some credibility. She knew that in returning to Pakistan, she was putting her life at risk. As she said often to us while we were growing up, where there is dictatorship, the forces of extremism can flourish. And this is why she believed so passionately in democracy. She had no illusions. She knew that she could not wave a magic wand and make a country democratic overnight. But she also knew that she had to try. And I am sure you will all agree that her courage was unflinching and enduring. Ever since she left University, at a time of life when her contemporaries were enjoying themselves, getting jobs, starting families, she was challenging the military dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq. During that time she spent six years in prison or under detention, often in solitary confinement. Elected as the youngest Prime Minister of a Muslim country, she rose to the challenge, even though the problems she faced of governing a developing country were immense.
As a woman, she also had to realise that she was working in a predominantly male Muslim society; and she had the daily challenge of fulfilling her duties as a wife and a mother. As children, we may not have seen her as much as other children see their mothers but what I hold dear to me is the certain knowledge of her devotion to us. At the same time, we always knew that her life was on the world stage, amongst the people. She did not want to become a drawing room politician; and it is of some consolation that she died on December 27 last year, among the people she loved and who loved her.
Thank you for honouring her with this award.