At the age of 19, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has been thrust into front-line turbulent politics in Pakistan. As chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party, the first-year Oxford University undergraduate – whose first language is English – will play a prominent role in the country he barely knows, alongside his father Asif Ali Zardari.
Bilawal will leave his studies at Oxford to head the Pakistan People’s Party. Described by friends as studious and devoted to his mother, the teenager is considered a novice to public life. He has yet to debate in the Oxford Union and would have to squeeze in the January elections before he returns to the UK for his second term at university.
Bilawal was born in September 1988, three months before his mother Benazir was elected prime minister for the first time.