The highest civil award of Nishan-i-Imtiaz and the title of Madar-i-Jamhooriayat (mother of democracy) was bestowed by the government on Pakistan's former first lady Begum Nusrat Bhutto in recognition of her services for the cause of democracy in the country.
The civil award and the title were conferred on her a day after she died in Dubai following protracted illness and long years of exile and hours before her dead body was flown from Dubai and buried in the family mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh.
On the advice of the Prime Minister the acting President Monday approved the conferment of the highest civil award of Nishan-i-Imtiaz on her as well as the title of Madar-i-Jamhooriayat, spokesperson Farhatullah Babar said. Begum Nusrat Bhutto was great woman and a national asset not only because she is the woman behind two great leaders of our country - Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto - but also in her own right for having fought a heroic struggle for the restoration of democracy in the country, the citation said.
It described Begum Nusrat Bhutto as a great national asset whose heroic struggle for the cause of democracy in the country will be long remembered. Begum Sahiba is a living example of a life standing tall despite unspeakable tragedies inflicted upon her by successive dictatorships bent upon destroying the social, political and constitutional fabric of the country. In the struggle for democracy she witnessed and endured the execution of her illustrious husband through judicial abuse, the tragic assassination of her two sons in the prime of their lives and of her daughter, the Muslim World's first elected Prime Minister.-PR