It is one thing being able to contest an election and to give the people hope that I can be the next prime minister. It is a totally different situation where the people of Pakistan are told that the results are already taken and the leader of your choice is banned.
Our people are dying, poverty and unemployment are on the rise, but the rest of the world says that Musharraf is needed because [only] he can stop nuclear proliferation, [only] he [can launch] an operation in the tribal areas.
We learned at an early age that it was men’s interpretation of our religion that restricted women’s opportunities, not our religion itself. Islam in fact had been quite progressive toward women from its inception.
General Musharraf needs my participation to give credibility to the electoral process, as well as to respect the fundamental right of all those who wish to vote for me.
While living in America when I attended Harvard in the early 1970s, I saw for myself the awesome, almost miraculous, power of a people to change policy through democratic means.
I believe that democracies do not go to war; that’s the lesson of history, and I think that a democratic Pakistan is the world community’s best guarantee of stability in Asia.
The next decade cannot be a decade of confrontation and contention. It cannot be east vs. West. It cannot be men vs. women. It cannot be Islam vs. Christianity. That is what the enemies of dialogue want.
All through the years of the Soviet empire, its Politburo held ‘elections.’ Of course, calling something an election and actually having it be an election are different things.
![Benazir Bhutto Quote - Our people are dying, poverty and unemployment are on the rise, but the rest of the world says that Musharraf is needed because [only] he can stop nuclear proliferation, [only] he [can launch] an operation in the tribal areas.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/our-people-are-dying-poverty-and-unemployment-are-.jpg)
