Bilawal Bhutto Zardari Age, Wife, Politics, Family, Biography & More

Some Lesser Known Facts About Bilawal Bhutto Zardari

• Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is a Pakistani politician who is known for being the youngest foreign minister of Pakistan.

• He belongs to the Bhutto family, a famous political family in Pakistan. Bilawal’s mother, Benazir Bhutto, was the first female Prime Minister of Pakistan. On 27 December 2007, Benazir was assassinated while campaigning for parliamentary elections. His father, Asif Ali Zardari, was a former President of Pakistan. He is the maternal grandson of former president and Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his wife, Nusrat Bhutto. On 18 March 1978, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged to death on the charge of having ordered the assassination of a political opponent in 1974.
  

  A childhood image of Bilawal Bhutto (left) with his mother Benazir Bhutto Zardari, and sisters, Asifa Bhutto Zardari and Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari (right)

• Bilawal has Baloch ancestry on his father’s side and Sindhi ancestry on his mother’s family.

• Bilawal has spent most of his childhood outside Pakistan, travelling with his mother; his mother went into self-imposed exile in 1999, living between London and Dubai for the next decade, before attending Oxford for further studies. In 2010, he shifted back to Pakistan.

• After the death of Bilawal’s mother Benazir Bhutto, his father appeared in a press conference in the wake of the assassination in which he announced that his son would link with his mother’s famous last name ‘Bhutto.’ Bilawal Zardari’s name was change to Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

• On 30 December 2007, three days after the death of Benazir Bhutto, he was appointed as the chairperson of the Pakistan People’s Party to succeed his mother. Bilawal was a 19-year-old Oxford undergraduate when his family made him get involved in politics.

• In Bilawal’s first press conference after being appointed as the chairperson of PPP, he quoted about his mother by saying,
  

  My mother always said that democracy is the best revenge.”

• In an interview, an aide to Benazir Bhutto’s talked about Benazir and shared that she always wanted her son Bilawal to become her political heir.
  

  A teenage picture of Bilawal Bhutto and his mother, Benazir Bhutto

• Despite belonging to a family of Sindhi and Baloch, Bilawal’s first langauge is English. According to sources, after Bilawal joined the Pakistan People’s Party as its chairman, the workers of the political party were asked to speak to Bilawal in Urdu or Sindhi to groom him for his role as a party chairman. ^[7]Indian Express

• On 28 June 2018, the Pakistan People’s Party, under Bilawal, became the first major political party in the country to make public its manifesto for the 2018 general elections. The manifesto was titled,
  

  BB ka wada nibhana hai Pakistan bachana hai’ (We have to fulfil Benazir Bhutto’s promise and save Pakistan)

  The manifesto pledged to curtail hunger, rebuild the country’s economy and foster harmony between different country institutions.

• The Pakistan People’s Party, led by Bilawal, contested in the July 25 general elections in Pakistan and won, becoming the largest party in Sindh and the third-largest party in the country.

• On 13 August 2018, Bilawal was elected as a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan.

• Bilawal, after he delivered his maiden speech in the parliament, many Pakistani Journalists, politicians, and Twitter users praised him for providing a ‘well-rounded speech.’ A famous Pakistan- based TV anchor, Kashif Abbasi, took to Twitter to praise Bilawal. He tweeted,
  

  Bilawal Bhutto… I was impressed with the election campaign,the more I hear his mature speech,the more impressed I am. Talk about problems,talk about challenges,he is the opposition so he will do some politics also..”

• On 5 March 2019, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari was elected as the chairperson of the National Assembly Standing Committee for Human Rights.

• Mr Bhutto Zardari plays different sports in his leisure time; he enjoys cricket, shooting and horse riding. He also has a black belt in taekwondo.

• On 27 April 2022, he was sworn in as the 37th foreign minister of Pakistan; the President, Arif Alvi, took his oath.

•  Bilawal is known to be a strong supporter of women’s empowerment, and he often talks about the equality of the sexes in various press conferences. In 2019, he called for a ban on child marriage in Pakistan, stating that a girl dies in Pakistan “every 20 minutes” due to underage pregnancy. Bilawal tweeted,
  

  UAE marriage age is 18, Indonesia is 18, and Turkey is also 18. Are they not Muslim countries? In Sindh where marriage age is 18, we saw how law stopped an adult marrying a 10-year-old! Every 20 minutes a girl dies in Pakistan as a result of underage pregnancy. #EndChildMarriage.”

• In 2018, an unidentified group of people pelted stones at Bilawal’s convoy in Karachi, Pakistan during the election campaign rally. According to sources, the convoy was going from the Baghdadi area to Juna Masjid in Karachi when more than 100 residents began pelting stones in protest and shouted the slogan “Go Bilawal go!.”

• Bilawal Bhutto, during an interview in 2018, talked about his career as a politician and said that he never thought of pursuing a career in politics. Further, Bilawal said, to continue the family legacy, he decided to enter into politics. ^[8]Reuters

• He is often spotted smoking cigarettes at various events. ^[9]YouTube – Times Now
  

  A still from the video shared by a News channel regarding Bilawal Bhutto’s smoking habit

• Reportedly, in 2022, a Pakistan-based journalist, Yasir Feroz, who worked for the news channel Samaa TV, lost his job for raising a question before Bilawal Bhutto Zardari during his visit to the United States after the video of the interview went viral. In the interview, Yasir was heard raising questions to Bilawal regarding the devastating flood in Pakistan and whether any infrastructural problems flared the flood disasters under the leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party. He questioned,
  

  “Sab climate change hai sir? Karachi ke infrastructure pe koi kaam nahi hona?”

  However, Bilawal did not properly respond to the journalist’s question and asked him to visit Karachi to analyse the situation of the flood, to which Yasir replied that he was from Karachi himself. After hearing the response, Bilawal walked away without giving Yasir an adequate answer. Soon after, on 25 September 2022, Yasir posted a video in which he shared how he was fired by the Pakistani news channel Samaa TV over a Whatsapp message. Yasir Feroz shared a screenshot of the Whatsapp message he received from the news channel that read,

  Aapne kuch khabren aesi break ki hain, jo nahi honi thi.”

  According to Yasir, soon after the incident, he was asked to leave all the Whatsapp newsgroups and was told that he was no longer associated with Samaa.

سیلاب تو ساٹھ سال سے آرہے ہیں، بنیادی انفراسٹرکچر کہاں ہے؟ صحافی نے بہت اچھلنے والے بلاول کی بولتی بند کردی۔۔ pic.twitter.com/Snuf42Fj90

— Salman Durrani (@DurraniViews) September 23, 2022