ISLAMABAD: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s pregnancy announcement captured much attention from the global media. She is expected to be the first New Zealand Prime Minister to give birth while in office.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, son of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto who was the first to give birth while serving as prime minister in 1990, wrote a column in the Guardian, reminiscing about the experience that “struck a nerve” with the young politician and his sisters.
“The news about Jacinda Ardern struck a nerve with my sisters and I. It is indeed uplifting to see the world rejoice at her good fortune.While there are the detractors and naysayers, the barrage of good wishes, the #knitforJacinda campaign and countless other little gestures, has been overwhelmingly positive. But it was only natural for me to look back and compare this situation with the one my mother faced 28 years ago when she became the first world leader to give birth while in office”, Bilawal wrote.
Speaking about his mother’s political journey and the perils she faced whilst going through her pregnancy, he writes, “My mother began her political journey as a symbol of hope and resistance to the repressive, regressive, Islamist regime of General Ziaul Haq. He imposed a dictatorship, hanged my grandfather – the first democratically elected prime minister – on trumped-up charges, and brutalised Pakistani society under the most authoritarian regime our country has ever seen. Perhaps most controversially when she was pregnant with my sister, Bakhtawar, her prime ministership was challenged for that fact. There were calls for her dismissal, the setting up of a caretaker government because a pregnant woman had no right to be prime minister. It’s not like the constitution allowed for maternity leave.”
“Benazir Bhutto proved beyond a doubt, with her life and relentless courage, that women can certainly do everything,” the young Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman stated.
