Today, December 27, 2023 marks the sixteenth death anniversary of Benazir Bhutto. She sacrificed her life courageously while resisting the agenda of fanatics and terrorists in Pakistan.

She fought relentlessly against forces bent upon to turn Pakistan into a terrorist state so that it could never progress towards egalitarianism and democracy.

Unfortunately, her assailants and their abettors are still at large. Those arrested were exonerated on August 31, 2017 after trial lingered on for nearly a decade.

Since the tragic assassination of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007, Pakistan has been continuously entrapped in dreadful conflicts and grave crises—constitutional, political and economic. Country lacks leadership capable of pulling state out of the mess created not only by long military rule, but also under the Decade of Democracy [2008-18] and nearly four years rule [August 18, 2018 to April 9, 2022] of hybrid-regime experiment, as well as 16 months’ misrule of alliance government of Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM).

In today’s Pakistan, there is not a single leader that matches the vision and determination of Benazir Bhutto [June 21, 1953—December 27, 2007] to regain what we have lost domestically and internationally. The coalition government of PDM and coalition government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) also proved during their rule that they lacked the agenda to make Pakistan a true democratic polity and a welfare state.

It is tragic and shameful that the state machinery has utterly failed to unveil the real hands behind Benazir’s assassination even after a lapse of sixteen years. After a verdict by Anti-Terrorist Court on August 31, 2017, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) accused Gen Pervez Musharraf (late) of hatching a conspiracy for her assassination and in retaliation the General accused Asif Ali Zardari........

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