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President Zardari to visit UK for daughter's graduation

LONDON: President Asif Ali Zardari will visit Britain to attend the graduation ceremony of Bakhtawar

By Murtaza Ali Shah
June 22, 2012
LONDON: President Asif Ali Zardari will visit Britain to attend the graduation ceremony of Bakhtawar Bhutto-Zardari at the University of Edinburgh, The News has learnt.Bakhtawar Bhutto-Zardari, 22, will be graduating from the Scottish university on 28th of June after completing a four-year English literature degree.
President Zardari — whom she calls ‘Baba’ — was scheduled to visit Britain from 23-30 of June but the political turmoil following the Supreme Court disqualification of Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani forced the Presidency to re-schedule his visit to the new dates of 27-30 of June.
Bakhtawar will formally graduate in the afternoon of June 28 at a ceremony for the “School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures” where President Zardari will be present. She has completed her dissertation titled “Shakespeare’s political heroines in Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth, Othello and The Winter’s Tale”.
The daughter of assassinated leader Benazir Bhutto — known as Itty Bee (pet name given to her by her mother) to her friends in the university — has already vowed to follow in her mother’s footsteps by returning to Pakistan and leading social reforms. The graduation ceremony is important because the occasion will herald her entry into active politics of Pakistan. It is believed that she will be given a senior position in the party straight afterwards.
Recently, Bakhtawar was interviewed by an English newspaper as part of the formal announcement of her entry into Pakistani politics. “I want to continue my mother’s work on social issues such as women’s rights, education and poverty. I want to educate myself about my country. I want to wander around and see real life for myself. There’s an awful lot to do,” she told the paper in the extensive interview.
In what seemed more like her own political charter, she put to rest rumours that she will stand against her brother, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, in politics. “It became some story about me starting a political party against my brother. They said the dynasty was splitting. It’s total fiction. I want to support my brother. My mother always told us to be proud and to stick together.”
Bakhtawar, who knows she will be criticised by her detractors for joining the family business coming from a feudal, rich background, tried to assert herself as the future potential leader of Pakistan by stating, “I don’t consider myself Western.” She made it clear she will not care “whatever the chattering classes in Islamabad say about her foreign upbringing”, as her sense of duty is clear. “I want to stand up and be counted; to make an effort to help my country.”
She went on. “I do recognise that I’ve benefited from a UK education for the past four years, but otherwise I consider myself Eastern. I’ve got a lot to learn. I want to educate myself about my country. I want to wander around and see real life for myself. There’s an awful lot to do. People say to me, ‘What do you know about Pakistan? You don’t know how we suffer’. But our family has also suffered so much for Pakistan.” She added: “I’m proud of my family.”
At the university Bakhtawar — meaning a harbinger of good luck — didn’t make many friends, conscious of the fact that Bhuttos are known the world over but also due to the controversy around her father and tragedies that have always followed the Bhutto family.
Bakhtawar shared how they didn’t have a normal childhood with her parents, especially their father who was in jail. “By the time the authorities allowed us to have regular phone calls (with Zardari, who was in jail), I was almost a teenager and yet he was still telling me to go to bed by 8pm, not to watch television or read comics. In Baba’s mind we must still have been the young kids we had been when he was arrested.”
Bakhtawar took a course in South Asian studies at the university but on the first day went into the lecture hall to find an enormous photo of Ziaul Haq, the military dictator who hanged her grandfather, projected on to the wall. That made Bakhtawar very angry. “All the recommended books were telling me how my grandfather was the worst man in history. I had big arguments with the teacher. He didn’t like the Bhuttos. I’m sick of hearing how corrupt my mother, my father and grandfather are supposed to be — until they die, of course. Then, they become the best thing Pakistan has ever had.”
Itty and Bilawal were described as “a mirror image of the Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi brother-and-sister team across the border in India” by the newspaper.
It was clear from her interview that she looked forward to seeing her father at the end of this month for private moments. “The family had one summer together after my mother was killed and before my father became president. Our private time is very special. It’s the only time I can really relax.”
“Even now, I feel like I’m literally coming home. My mother’s make-up is still in her bedroom; our family photo albums are still on the shelves.”
She defended the controversial will which purportedly placed her father in charge of the party. “We were all in a room together when he read out my mother’s will,” she said, adding that Zardari suggested that Bilawal should stand as PPP chairman. “It was his idea, not anyone else’s. He had tears in his eyes. He said we have to let the party vote.”
Aseefa Bhutto-Zardari, who until recently attended a Scottish private school but now studies for degree at an undisclosed university, added during the interview: “He (Zardari) was angry and upset. He wanted to get us away from politics until we were married with children. He himself had no intention.”
Preparations are being made by Pakistan High Commission to facilitate the visit of the President Zardari, a source in Pakistan High Commission said.