Today, 27 December 2025, marks the eighteenth 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 on turning Pakistan into a theocratic-cum-militant state, so that it could never progress towards egalitarianism and democracy.

Since the tragic assassination of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto on 27 December 2007, Pakistan has been continuously entrapped in dreadful conflicts and grave crises, constitutional, political, and economic. Tragically, the country lacks leadership capable of pulling the state out of this perpetual mess.

The prevailing catastrophic situation has not emerged all of a sudden. It is not a result of long military rule and controlled democracy alone, but also due to the utter failure of civil leadership under the Decade of Democracy (2008–18). The so-called Decade of Democracy was followed by nearly four years (August 2018 to April 2022) of a hybrid-regime experiment, with the coalition government of Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Since then, we have hybrid-plus arrangements!

The political crisis following the first-ever successful vote of no-confidence against an elected (sic) Prime Minister was further accentuated by sixteen months’ misrule of the alliance government of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM). Pakistan, now under the second tenure of Shehbaz Sharif as Prime Minister, backed by the establishment, lacks legitimacy as he was installed after the open manoeuvring of the results of the general elections of 8 February 2024.

In today’s Pakistan, there is not a single leader who matches the vision and determination of Benazir Bhutto to regain what we have lost domestically and internationally.

Benazir Bhutto And The Cost Of Silencing Women’s Leadership

After multiple terms by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Muslim League (Nawaz), many call these musical chair games. The alliance government of PDM and the coalition government of PTI also proved that they lacked the agenda to make Pakistan a true democratic polity and a welfare state. The same is true for the incumbent government.

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 eighteen years. After the trial lingered for nearly a decade, the verdict in 2017 by the Anti-Terrorist Court was disapproved by the PPP, which accused General Pervez Musharraf (late) of hatching a conspiracy for her assassination. In retaliation, the General accused Asif Ali Zardari of being the main beneficiary; the well-known motive theory was applied by........

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