ISLAMABAD – The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is the only political party of the country which has rendered sacrifices of its leaders and stalwarts for the cause of the nation.
PPP first chairman Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is the first in row, who accepted gallows but did not bow to the dictator, while his daughter Benazir Bhutto was also assassinated by a suicide bomber.
Salmaan Taseer is the second governor of the party, who has been assassinated. Earlier, Hayat Mohammad Khan Sherpao, governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (then NWFP) was also killed in a bomb attack.
Sherpao took oath as 15th governor of the province on December 25, 1971 shortly after Bhutto became president of the country. He was 34, youngest person in the history of Pakistan, holding the office of a governor. He held the office till April 30, 1972.
He was assassinated on February 16, 1975, in a bomb explosion at the campus of University of Peshawar. The assassination of Sherpao was also considered a national tragedy. Salmaan Taseer was killed by a gunman of the Elite Force, Mumtaz Qadri, on Tuesday. Taseer started his political career as a PPP member in late 1960s, when he was a student.
He was a part of the movement for Bhutto’s freedom, opposed his arrest and death sentence. He wrote a political biography on Bhutto titled “Bhutto: A political biography (1980)”. In 1988 general elections, Taseer became a member of the Punjab Assembly from Lahore. In the 1990, 1993 and 1997 general elections, he contested as an MNA but lost.
In 2007, he was appointed an interim federal minister for Industries, Production and Special Initiatives. On May 15, 2008, Taseer was appointed governor of Punjab by the PPP-led coalition government. On January 4, 2011 he was murdered in Islamabad by a guard assigned to him for security by the Punjab government.
